Brunel Business School – Doctoral Symposium 27‐28th March 2012  

Student First Name: Catherine Isobel

Student Second Name: Darlington

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Key Words

ambiguity, affect, authority, dirt, heuristics, local rhymes, place, public ritual, the sacred

Late-stage candidates may discuss the decisions they are taking concerning

how their theoretical, methodological or empirical arguments will be

presented through persuasive writing

(BBS Symposium Guidance 2012)

Dirty Dartford, Peculiar People:

a Heuristic for them and for us

Introduction

This paper considers how theoretical, methodological or empirical arguments may be

presented and is our third attempt at expressing knowledge succinctly.

The field remains public administration. The focus is the affective basis of local authority

and the findings are of practical value to place-marketers. Previously we showed how

exemplars can aid the presentation of qualitative research, finding deft use of exemplars in

Brody’s Inishkillane (1974) which demonstrates how large amounts of qualitative data can be

shaped into a coherent account. A year earlier we demonstrated how object theatre involving

grouped items can be used to objectify knowledge of different places in the form of

installations. Objectivity was involved because, as was shown, respondents and researchers

can work together to represent and inspect their knowledge in physical form; thus:

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fig. 1 Pictorial Heuristics of ‘Rival

Radios’ representing rival authorities in

‘Eastville’

fig. 2 ‘Gathering of Bears,

threatened by Sinister Masked Figure’,

representing dissimulation behind

‘Westville Traders’

This third paper also considers how to articulate theory and evidence concerning local social

relations over a long period of time. The solution seems simple enough; a heuristic gifted to

us by our respondents: a rhyme. This rhyme has luminous properties and has been recited for

many generations, encapsulating both what we wish to say about Dartford and what we think

Dartfordians knew already: the authorities governing their town have an unusually passionate

and positive preoccupation with dirt. Indeed the Borough Council’s authority (legitimate

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power) was fashioned out of disease-fighting and squalor-eradication, in order to attain a

‘brighter and more beautiful’, ‘airy’, ‘wide-awake’ and ‘garden-girt Dartford’.

What are Heuristics and What do they do?

Heuristics must be useful and possess a certain currency. Ours seems to meet both criteria as

the rhyme has circulated for a long time. Abbott describes heuristics as:

gambits of imagination, mental moves [social scientists] employ to hasten discovery.

Like gambits in chess, these mental moves are formulas for the opening, developing,

and realizing of possibilities. Some are general gambits implicit in the nature of

argument and description, while others arise in conceptual issues that pervade the

disciplines.

(Abbott, 2004:4)

We push this imaginative and expansive use of heuristics further by suggesting that heuristics

can be generated not only by researchers but by their respondents (and may be written, oral or

pictorial). Our heuristic is also theirs. It is concise, portable and plastic, providing for

concepts which are otherwise difficult to express. ‘Respondents’ re-telling of the rhyme over

long periods suggests that there is ‘something in it’ as locals have acted on the implications of

the rhyme by pursuing public health, ‘airy’ green spaces and cleansing open-air festivals,

processions and parades at every opportunity. Though locals know not who devised it nor

exactly when, it dates from no later than 1910 when the town was involved in planting-out

extensive parks gifted to it by two local industrial magnates. Earlier rhymes also provide

circumstantial evidence of the affective social relations out of which the ‘Brighter and More

beautiful Dartford Movement’ grew.

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Heuristic Rhyme

Dirty Dartford,

Peculiar people

Bury their dead

Above the steeple

This is the best-known version of the best-known Dartford rhyme. Other versions include:

Dirty Dartford,

Stuck-up people,

Put their churchyard

Above the steeple

Alternatively

Dirty Dartford,

Wicked people,

Bury their dead

Above the steeple

There are between ten and fifteen versions in current use. This enigmatic little verse is

recited by Dartfordians part-ironically, part-humorously, without dwelling on what the poem

is about for they are already ‘in-the-know’ about Dartford. It is officially acknowledged:

Dartford Borough Council has reproduced the poem on a plaque at the entrance to a burial

ground above the steeple. The Council has also repeated the poem on post-cards designed in

conjunction with Dartford’s ‘heritage trail’.

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fig. 3 plaque at the entrance to St. Edmund's Pleasance, quoting ‘Dirty Dartford’

fig. 4 Dartford ‘Heritage Trail’ Postcards

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By turning one’s back on the plaque and moving a short distance, the following view is obtained of the church below:

fig. 5 Holy Trinity church from cemetery

The poem begins clearly enough: ‘Dirty Dartford’ is boldly unequivocal, but ‘Peculiar

people’ is ambiguous as it may mean ‘special’, ‘distinguished’, ‘unusual’, ‘odd’, ‘eccentric’,

and ‘somehow different’ most, but not all of which are pejorative1. The poem explains that

what’s peculiar about Dartford is that they ‘Bury their dead above the steeple’. It is clear to

locals that the ‘steeple’ refers to Holy Trinity Church at the foot of East Hill. The place

‘above the steeple’ is St. Edmund’s Pleasance graveyard on East Hill, though peculiarly this

graveyard was closed well before the poem is believed to have been devised.

The verse divides insiders from outsiders to whom it is sinister, containing free-floating sky-

burials (like a Chagall painting). However the verse alludes to an anti-dirt tendency

(Improvement) in such a cryptic way that it may be overlooked even by locals; Improvement

well-served by strict regulations governing the burial of the dead, not here at this cemetery

but at the later ‘licensed cemetery’ further over East Hill.                                                             1 The Peculiars were also a strict branch of Methodism 

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The flip side of Improvement is dirt. Pollution was produced by local cement factories;

foundries; paper-works; stamping mills; breweries; and engineering-works nevertheless many

of their owners supported Improvement (for example, as members of the Association of

Dartford Industries and subscribers to the journal ‘Wide Awake Dartford’). This dialectic

between The Pure and The Impure is implied by the rhyme. On a Durkheimian reading, we

think we see different variants of the Sacred acted out not only in the poem but also between

Improvers and Economisers as they vied for supremacy.

fig. 6 1932 flyer for a pageant

attracting 60,000

A heuristic for them and for us?

We use the word ‘them’ (meaning ‘Dartfordians’) advisedly. The rhyme can be read both as

an abject and ironic riposte to ‘Brighter and More Beautiful Dartford’ and as an urgent call

for fresh improvement. The implication for place marketers may be that if the incantation

can be kept going, further improvements can be accomplished.

Dartford has had a passion for improvement for over a century and the poem winks at this:

during the nineteenth century, local authority, public feelings and ethics were hotly contested

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between Economisers and Improvers, especially between the 1870’s and the 1930’s.

Improvers promoted a ‘Brighter and More Beautiful, garden-girt Dartford’, better street-

lighting, sanitation and numerous other services. Dirt was their sworn enemy. Economisers

resisted in the name of ‘self-help’ and hated the tax increases and encroaching regulation that

accompanied improvements. The triumph of the Improvers remains evident in the

exceptional acreage of public green space demanded by ‘townspeople’ amid passionate

public protests and legal challenges to C19th land enclosures. Parkland was bought and

returned to Dartfordians by Everard Hesketh (partner in an innovative engineering company)

and by Colonel Kidd (owner of Kidd’s Steam Brewery).

Detailed contemporary descriptions of grand openings survive, including elements that are

still being re-used: firework displays, silver bands, historical re-enactments and pageants;

repeated over and over again for crowds of up to 70,000. In this way the improver ethic was

incorporated into modern local government and fresh rounds of ‘regeneration’ continue to

this day. But here is the paradox, which the poem also betrays: Dartford remains attached to

dirt.

Dartford/ Dirtford

There’s a hint of ‘abjection’ in the enjoyment of a poem which describes Dartfordians as

‘dirty and peculiar’ (see Kristeva, 1982). Dirt persists in Dartford’s alter-ego ‘Dirtford’, a

slang place-name found on the Internet, identifying Dirtford as a ‘Top Ten Chav Town’. So

why might a Borough Council also acknowledge and reproduce an apparently bleak

message? Look beyond the rhyme at Dartford’s Annual Festival, and you will see that as

well as being justly proud of their parkland, the organisers also entertain parody, absurdity

and coarseness for example inviting Stavros Flatley to the Dartford Festival

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(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvFmGoaKO3I) and hosting the World’s Strongest Man

Competition which involved pulling a refuse truck

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGL0haB9g6M . The Borough is pleased with its Mick

Jagger Centre and welcomes back its dissolute son as often as possible and the custodians of

its past, the Historical and Antiquarian Society, meets here. Several new streets will

commemorate Rolling Stones songs. We conjecture that by giving dirt an official place the

local authority makes it safe.

Can we also make the poem work as a theoretical device? Durkheim’s account of the Pure

and Impure Sacred and of their ambiguity (1912) seems encapsulated in the abjection,

veneration and ambiguity of the poem-on-the-plaque. Durkheim might note the way that the

spectre of the pure and impure has been invoked by Dartford’s public re-enactments and

historical tableaux. Although Durkheim’s account remains underdeveloped (Riley, 2005) and

has been taken in directions we would not take, nevertheless it works for us. Thus:

fig. 6 Dartford Festival, 1951, a celebration of the Pure Sacred?

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fig 7 Messrs. Burroughs

Welcome anniversary

celebration. Butterfly

pollinating flower with

maypole dancers dressed

pure white.

The rhyme helps us to read Durkheim. In it we find a type of ambiguity which Durkheim

alludes to, which inhabits Dartford and which the Borough memorialises and makes safe.

Conclusion

Heuristics have universal application. However (and unusually) we are toying with a

heuristic that means something to Dartfordians and Durkheimians. We suggest Dartfordians

know something which Durkheimians also know, however locals manage to express it more

simply. Our excursion around a heuristic is part-methodological, part-empirical, and part-

speculative and it leads us to at least one practical suggestion. Unwrapping the poem

uncovers Dartford’s paradox: ‘peculiar’ dedication to improvement, coupled with ‘peculiar’

attachment to dirt. The Improvers were producers of dirt (foundries and cement factories)

and, though not officially sanctioned, the ‘Dirty Dartford’ they wished to eradicate persists.

The rhyme encompasses these ambiguities, and for us, Durkheim’s Pure and Impure Sacred.

These different forms of the Sacred, sublime and absurd, continue to bemuse and to animate

Dartfordians.

The rhyme holds up a mirror to the affective life of public Dartford and qualifies as its ‘meta-

ritual’. It has persisted for at least a century and is plastic enough for current use. This

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plasticity is reflected in minor revisions. Easy to remember, it still has practical uses. Keep it

alive. Pass it on.

fig. 8 the 1933 Charter

Day celebrations are

recalled and updated as the

Borough prepares for the

space age.

Bibliography

Abbott, A. (2004) Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences. New York:

W.W Norton & Company, Inc.

Brody, H. (1974) Inishkillane: Change and Decline in the West of Ireland. Harmondsworth:

Penguin Books Limited

Durkheim, E. [1912] tr. 1915; 2nd ed. 1976. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.

London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.

Kristeva, J. (1982) Powers of Horror:an essay in abjection. [online]. Available at

http://www.csus.edu/indiv/o/obriene/art206/Readings/Kristeva - Powers of Horror[1].pdf

[accessed 23/02/2012]

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Riley, A.T. (2005) ‘Renegade Durkheim and the transgressive left sacred’ in Alexander, J.C.

and Smith, P. (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 275-301