The two main characters of my novel The Bloodless Boy were real people. Both employed by the Royal Society of London, Robert Hooke was its Curator of Experiments, and Harry Hunt, who had been Hooke’s apprentice, was an ‘observator’. My story has them investigate the death of a blood-drained boy, using their knowledge of the ‘new philosophy’—as science was then usually known.
Hooke’s design resulted in his microscope
Here, I concentrate on Robert Hooke (1635–1703). Richard Waller, his contemporary, tells us his inventions numbered ‘some hundreds’. Hooke himself said they were ‘not fewer than a thousand.’ An Original Fellow of the Royal Society, when appointed its Curator in 1663 he became responsible for providing ‘considerable experiments’—three or four every week. Later, he became its Secretary, continuing in both roles. Although the overwork caused him great stress—his diary shows he often resolved to leave—he remained, living in lodgings at the Society’s meeting place, Gresham College in Bishopsgate, until his death.
Waller leaves us a fine description: ‘As to his Person he was but despicable, being very crooked… This made him but low of Stature, tho’ by his Limbs he shou’d have been moderately tall. He was always very pale and lean… with a meagre Aspect, his Eyes grey and full, with a sharp ingenious Look whilst younger…’
Hooke thought all his stooping over a lathe as a young man had caused his hunched back.
An astronomer, he made improvements to telescopes. He discovered Jupiter’s Red Spot, and used it to calculate the length of Jupiter’s day. He was first to realise that Saturn’s ‘ears’ were in fact rings. He also improved microscope design. He was the first to observe microorganisms (the microfungus mucor)—which he called ‘animalcules’—and coined the term ‘cell’. Reading his description in Micrographia of silk fibres and fine lawn cloth sparked my idea he would make a great investigator, heading a sort of CSI: 17th century London. He made instruments to improve hearing (his autocausticon) and systems to communicate over great distances, demonstrating his signalling system, utilising telescopes and towers, to the Navy. (A Mr. Samuel Pepys.) Hooke saw scientific instruments as the way of improving human senses to the perfection Adam must have enjoyed, before the Fall corrupted them.
Hooke’s intricate drawing of a flea
Hooke built an air-pump for experiments in vacua to investigate the air, respiration, and combustion, as well as preservation. In my story, it’s used to store the eponymous bloodless boy, as Hooke and Hunt investigate his death. The early Royal Society drew mockery for doing little but ‘weighing of air’. Sir Nicholas Gimcrack, the main character of Shadwell’s The Virtuoso, is based on Hooke. After Hooke saw the play, his diary reads: ‘Damned Doggs. Vindica me Deus.’ [God grant me revenge.]
A skilled anatomist, he helped with a series of experiments in blood transfusion between animals, and also between animals and men. (A man named Arthur Coga received blood from a lamb, which led him to some disappointment he didn’t grow wool.) Without giving too much away, I hope, these experiments provide a major plotline for The Bloodless Boy. Animal experimentation seems to have upset him. Hooke vowed not to repeat an open thorax experiment on a dog ‘because of the torture of the creature.’
Hooke’s reputation is of being mistrustful, solitary, and argumentative. This picture’s largely based on his disputes with Isaac Newton—involving, among other things, the nature of light, microscope design, and gravitation—as if Newton were not the more difficult man. In later life it’s probably fair, but at the time The Bloodless Boy is set Hooke was social and collaborative. His diary shows him at various coffeehouses and taverns, often two or more times a day, and records all his meetings for the Royal Society, and for the City of London as its Surveyor. He helped set the post-Fire building regulations. Staking out plots and writing certificates of compensation made him rich: after his death, the iron chest in his lodgings held £8,000 of money and £300 of gold and plate, worth today a million pounds or so. He needed very little sleep, apparently, often working all night, then napping during the day.
The Monument to the Great Fire in 1753
When the Royal Society was at its lowest ebb in the 1670s, its meetings hardly attended—one diary entry says ‘None came till past 3 for lecture then two which grumbled.’—Hooke was central in the political manoeuvrings to rescue it. Yet he also found time to run separate ‘clubs’: his New Philosophical Clubb, his Decimall Society, and his Crowne Taverne Clubb. (Spellings from his diary.) Intriguingly, his short-lived Rosicrucian Clubb included Dr. Israel Tonge, who, with Titus Oates, fabricated evidence detailing a ‘Popish Plot’, which gripped London in the late 1670s into the 1680s. By the end of this bout of anti-Catholic hysteria, thirty-five innocent people had been executed for their supposed involvement. Oates and Tonge both appear in the novel, as Hooke and Hunt become embroiled in their fantastical plot.
Hooke had a lifelong friendship with Sir Christopher Wren. Historians of architecture have great fun trying to disentangle their work. It seems pretty clear Hooke designed the Monument to the Great Fire, and also the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. The Monument doubled as another of Hooke’s instruments, each of its steps being exactly six inches high to enable accurate barometric observations. It was a zenith telescope, too, Hooke wanting to measure the distance to a star, and also calculate the radius of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Sadly, the vibration of traffic up Fish Street made measurement to the degree of accuracy required impossible. Astronomy moved to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, another building largely designed by Hooke.
The Bloodless Boy shamelessly makes use of Robert Hooke’s scientific genius, events detailed in his diary, and the turmoil of the Popish Plot, to create a fast-moving thriller. I’m delighted to share that Lee Child has said it’s ‘wonderfully imagined and wonderfully written’ and Joseph Finder calls it ‘a wonderful achievement.’
Robert J. Lloyd is the author of The Bloodless Boy published by Melville House.
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