IT BEATS AS IT SWEEPS
Kylie Stopes switches on Kylie Stopes switches on
the bizarre history of the vacuum cleaner
HOOVERSEXUALITY first came to light in New England in 1973. One summer afternoon, Robert Zufall MD was sitting in his tastefully stencilled surgery on Main Street, Dover, New Jersey. High above him, Shaker furniture clung to the walls (originally it had been hung up there to give the Pilgrim Mothers a clean sweep with a broom). Zufall loved his quiet country practice. Apart from the occasion- al chain-saw massacre, and crack rampage; the folks were real neighbourly and got on quietly enough with their birthin' and dyin'. Suddenly, his reverie was shattered by the ghastly shouts of a middle-aged man who rushed in pawing at his trousers. He had been assaulted by a vacuum cleaner. Good Dr Zufall penned the events of that dreadful afternoon to the Journal of the American Medical Association (`Lacera- tion of penis from hand vacuum cleaner', 1973, 224, p.630):
He said that he had been in his back yard, clad only in his undershorts, and cleaning his car when the hand vacuum cleaner he was using became clogged with dirt and stopped. He sat down on the back steps, took the cleaner apart and began to clean it out. Unfortunately, he had forgotten to turn it off; and, as he cleaned the last bit of debris that held the fan blades, the motor started, the penis was sucked into the whirring blades and the damage was done.
Damage was done indeed, as the assaults subsequently swept coast to coast and then to Britain. Half a mile up the line from a pretty Gothic railway station, a 65-year-old signalman was in his signal box when he bent down to pick up a railway timetable and 'caught his penis in a Hoover Dustette which happened to be switched on'. Branch line passengers were ferried by bus.
In England there were various 'models' with concealed fan blades who drew men close like moths to a flame. Soon it fell to two eminent British surgeons, Neil Citron and Peter Wade, in their classic paper, Penile injuries from vacuum cleaners' (I3MJ, 5 July 1980) to say how to perform the delicate task of repairing men who were cut to the heart.
In a quiet suburban house, a 60-year-old man happened to be sitting in the nude changing the plug of a Hoover Dustette while his wife was out shopping. It 'turned itself on' and caught him in its devil's grip. Miles away, an innocent 49-year-old man was helpfully vacuuming his friend's stair- case while wearing a loose-fitting dressing- gown. Intending to switch the machine off, he leaned across to reach the plug and 'at that moment his dressing-gown became undone and his penis was sucked into the vacuum cleaner'. Greater love hath no man than to vacuum the stairs for a friend.
Opened on Butler's Wharf in July this year, the Design Museum (which takes vacuum cleaners very seriously) is housed in a sparkling white block of early Modern- ism set beside the muddy lapping of the Thames at Tower Bridge. Inside on white marble floors thronged with youthful Ger- man and Swedish tourists, even the Christ- mas tree is hung only with approved white and red baubles all carefully 'designed'. Here leading design historians are working on a programme of top-level research into domestic appliance deviancy (DAD). One interesting theory is that it is caused by an inability to identify with carpet sweepers of the late Fifties and early Sixties. It is also believed that Hooversexuals may come from families where there is a weak, ineffectual or absent carpet sweeper, often combined with a dominating or excep- tionally possessive dustpan and brush.
Up on the second floor, behind a special- ly toughened glass screen, high security is given to a particularly notorious model the `Vampyr' vacuum cleaner designed in Germany during the 1920s by AEG (who produced a wide range of consumer goods to stimulate demand for electricity). With its long, elegant dull chrome handle and smooth rubber hand-grip, the Vampyr whizzed round smart little Berlin flats in the Twenties and was actually advertised as a kind of Lotte Lenya among vacuum cleaners. Although Berliners liked this effect, the cabbagey old British were hap- pier with Burrage & Boyd vacuum cleaners named after maids. In Britain during the Twenties, the most popular vacuum clean- ers were called 'Betty' and 'Daisy' (adver- tised as giving 'a strong pull to the nozzle').
The wonderfully computerised Design Museum library reveals that the vacuum cleaner is an Edwardian invention, brain- child of an obscure English mechanic called Booth. One evening in 1901, Her- bert Booth was sitting with a lady friend in the moist gas-lit brilliance of a West End restaurant (perhaps Gatti's or the Comedy Restaurant in Panton Street) when he was struck by a notion that, 'the way to get rid of dust and dirt was to suck it into a container of some kind'. To the amaze- ment of his dining companion, he suddenly put his mouth tightly against the plush upholstery on the back of his chair and drew in his breath very sharply. Instantly coughing and choking on inhaled London dust, Herbert Booth was nevertheless elated because mechanically he had proved his point — suction cleaning worked. In his not terribly rollicking memoir, Fabulous Dustpan (World Publishing Co., New York and Cleveland 1955) Frank Garfield Hoover goes on to explain how the race then began between Britain and the United States to see who could get the most seductive portable machine on to the mar- ket. In the end, Hoover became the household name — turning from the dying leather and saddlery business to vacuum cleaner production on that momentous day, 8 August 1908.
As well as memoirs, the vacuum cleaner has also inspired painting and music the world over. In 1956, for example, Malcolm Arnold CBE published his Opus 57, A Grand Grand Overture scored for sym- phony orchestra and four vacuum cleaners (this was also the year he wrote his revealing article in Music and Musicians entitled, 'I think of music in terms of sound'). Similarly, so taken was the Amer- ican painter Richard Hamilton with the `Constellation' vacuum cleaner cased in a Bardot-pink plastic shell that he featured it in his famous Pop collage, Just what is it that makes today's home so different, so appealing?
Music, painting, pleasure, woe: the in- fluence of the vacuum cleaner has been always subversive. Just because it is in- teresting to record such things, I once took down the words of 'Nick', a likeable young man who had never been in trouble with the Electricity Council before:
I first got into Hoovers at a lunch party in Maida Vale. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon and we were all very drunk. Suddenly, a young bloke in a corduroy frock started Hoovering people for a laugh. Girls just lay face down on the floor and he Hoovered their backs. They were shrieking. Then he Hoovered all of us. The heavy wheels and rotating brushes prodded my back a bit, but it was hysterically funny and strangely exciting. After that, I've been Hoovered regularly. I like the Hoover scene. It's for me.
It is all so odd, you just switch off.
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