You will hand me what I want and hold the fort in case of accidents, and generally lend me the moral support you’ve made me require. It’s a luxury, Bunny, but I found it devilish difficult to do without it after you turned pi!
Technology as a driving force in the Rafflesstories
“… and the telephone you’ve been at me about so long.”
Raffleswas never one to jump on new technology, while Bunny always seemed to be more interested in contemporary inventions. (Let’s face it, in the 21st century Raffles would be the one to refuse a smartphone for as long as society would allow it, holding on to his Nokia or Siemens with limited Internet access for dear life.) He is not “pining for electric light”, but will install it if it provides an excuse to clear his name to the police while robbing a bank at the same time.
Nevertheless, 1890s technology does play a big part in the stories – the telegrams, the fateful telephone call in “Trap”, the nightly bicycling in Ham Common, the many train rides and, last but not least, the steamship Uhlan, can all be identified as essential parts of the stories they appear in.
It is not the all-observing-all-absorbing type of technology we have today. Anyone who has tried writing a modern version of Raffles has likely put thought into how that kind of technology would affect Raffles’s and Bunny’s line of work, and found it a challenge to adapt. It was, however, an essential part of society at the time – communication and travel relied on then rather modern inventions like the telephone, the telegraph, and railways. How would it affect the stories if they were moved back a hundred and thirty years instead of forward – would that be as difficult to adapt?
Might it be that the technology present in the 1890s is in fact part of the very essence of the Raffles stories?
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This is only a bit of reflection on my part, but anyone who would like to add to the discussion is welcome to do so!
I just couldn’t imagine Raffles in modern times. They’d be CCTV everywhere. Chest Of Silver would NEVER have worked. Half the banks have closed down and the ones that are left would have CCTV. Him getting off the train wouldn’t work as they’re so unreliable it probably wouldn’t turn up! The post is only once a day so Bunny wouldn’t have gotten the letter until it was to late…
And the work at the Albany would have been cancelled and rescheduled so many times, he’d give up. “‘ain’t got the part 'ave I. Be 'bout a week, guv”. Just saying if the story was set in 2022 he’d suffocate in that chest! Lucky its 1890s.
@ludojudoposts I’m DYING now I’m suddenly craving a modern version of Chest where everything just goes blatantly wrong I think it couldwork making a modern adaptation, only it would take somuch knowledge about… security systems, storage of information, [other things I personally know very little about]. And Raffles would need to up his game as an inventor of burglar’s tools. Perhaps Bunny as a very tech-savvy partner who does all the hacking into security systems etc?
I could also see Raffles as being a proud “classical” burglar in modern times, using old methods in creative ways to work around all the modern technology. Exactly how that would work though…
It is very interesting though, right? The letter posted in Crew, for instance - how would that work today? Like you said, the letter getting to Bunny quickly enough would not be likely, so what would he have done? Texting or similar wouldn’t work - it was the physical evidence of him being on his way to Scotland that was the essential part. What could he do instead? Take a selfie on the train and send it to Bunny? Could work, but doesn’t quite hold the same dramatic effect as rushing out to post a hastily scribbled letter in the middle of the night and getting on the next train back.
Like I said, I think it could work with a bit of creativity, but it also does take away a big part of the whole spirit of the stories, doesn’t it?
Oh this is a fun topic! Adding my thoughts:
In the tv episode The Gold Cup, Raffles told Bunny to purchase a vacuum cleaner. How I’d love to see what that thing looked like (I’m picturing a carpet sweeper thing but maybe there were vacuums with suction already, idk?)
I think that in modern times Raffles would occasionally communicate via fax. Though that’s coming from me as a US-ian where most individuals and businesses don’t use them anymore but they’re still used in public service work, at least, and copy & printing shops. (A couple of places i worked in the 2010s required me to fax things: a hospital and a law office! Idk if other parts of the world fax much nowadays?) I like to think Raffles would know how to utilize all the old and obsolete technology in case he finds them useful. I can totally picture him faxing a message to Bunny from the 24-hour copyshop in Crew (or a public copier/fax machine at the train station..)! :D And watching Bunny’s face all excited as he watches the message print out before him (speaking of old 90s stuff it would also be hilarious if they could use pagers…it’s another thing that’s somewhat off the radar, not like a smartphone that could be tracked and messages read and understood by the likes of MacKenzie )
In their school days they totally made a ☎ using 2 paper cups and a piece of string.
I agree Toni, Raffles would still be a classical style burglar! And that would make him stand out, and there could potentially be copycats of him. Also love the idea of hacker Bunny. They’d wear all sorts of disguises as tradesmen to access buildings and information–and have many online identities, several of which are cricket tumblr fan accounts
RafflesWeek 2022 day 2 / 10th March — discussion topic “technology in Raffles”
Imagine. You are a writer with a decent income without being rich, and you rent a little cottage along the Thames with your partner in crimelover beloved brother. You’re also a bit of a tech geek, but, well, it’s the late 1890s and you love owning the hottest devices.
So here’s what Bunny Manders and A. J. Raffles Ralph Manders might have in their cottage in Ham Common. It’s only supposition, except for the bikes.
Bicycles
We can read in The Wrong House that Bunny and Raffles own two bicyclesHumberandSunbeam, two British brands (the patriotic fiber of Raffles). Both bikes are fitted with Dunlop tyres, chosen for their popularity, making wheel tracks more anonymous.
Camera
We’ve known for some time that Bunny owns a Kodak, and extrapolating that he had to part with it during his time in prison, we can imagine that he bought one back when he moved to Ham Common. My choice is the Folding Pocket Kodak Rochester 1898, for its small size and its elegance.
Typewriter
As a writer, Bunny probably carried a typewriter, even though he wrote his first draft by hand. In the same patriotic spirit as for bicycles, we can imagine Raffles offering him one of the models of the English Typewriter Limitedbrand.
Telephone
Raffles did not see the point of acquiring a telephone again. Fortunately, Bunny was able to continue to contact his publisher by telephone, as the cottage already had an electrical installation and had an old Gower-Bell telephone from 1878.
Music
Surprisingly, it was Raffles who found the whole phonograph cylinder thing exciting. And it was exciting! The most popular music became Tubes (literally, since it was engraved on wax tubes). But it was expensive so they choose an Amet Echophone (here, a model from 1896), cheaper than the Edison phonograph.
Bunny greeted the strange cone machine with delight and curiosity. It is rather probable that they recorded some conversations together, and Bunny listened to them again regularly until the wax deteriorated, many years later.
Bunny with that Kodak camera is such a sweet image
Raffles’ rooms at the Albany were, as I have described elsewhere, more befitting of a minor poet than the gentleman and cricketer he was. We spent many a happy hour in those rooms—and many unhappy, though fewer of those, thankfully—and even now, I can see them in my mind’s eye as clearly as were I still in them.
They were gutted after Raffles was tried and found guilty in absentia. Searched from top to bottom, wall to wall, even beneath the floorboards by sacrilegious officers of the law who hoped to find further evidence against him and against me. The manager of the building must have been furious; always a fussy, persnickity little man, I don’t doubt he was more angered by the disruption to his building by the police than by A. J.’s criminality bringing it into disrepute. People would much sooner move into the former rooms of an infamous criminal than into rooms with stripped wallpaper and bared floorboards—especially at the Albany’s prices!
I thought about those rooms a great deal whilst I was in prison. On my darker days, and of them there were many, I would lie back on my cot, flea-ridden and hard, and close my eyes, imagining I was instead sprawled back on A.J.’s comfortable, worn sopha. I would imagine until my head ached with the effort of it; until I could feel the warmth of the crackling fire, hear the bustling of the street below, smell the Sullivan’s smoke and coffee which promised his presence; promised his hand on my shoulder and voice in my ear; promised that Raffles would be there beside me if only I kept my eyes shut tight.
The Albany is still there, of course, as are Raffles’ rooms. I don’t doubt that his sopha, his bookcases, his desk, his bed, all of the large furniture which was already present when he first moved in was all eventually set back in order once the police had got their hands into every crack and nook they wanted. It is only Raffles who is removed; Raffles and every trace of him.
I tried to envision it. Every time I was jolted back from my precious illusions to cold reality, lying on that damned cot in that damned gaol, I would force myself to imagine instead someone new in those rooms; try to convince myself that drinking the wolfsbane and ruby grape of pleasant memory would be far more damaging in the long term than accepting harsh reality as it was. Raffles was gone.
And so, I turned my imagination to evicting him. I tried to imagine his bookshelves no longer bearing Rossetti and Keats and Browning and Shakespeare and Verne but filled instead with books of science, mathematics, engineering, or dry legal tomes, the duller the better; or better yet, bereft of all but the most run-of-the-mill bulk-purchased books-for-show, a library of the wilfully yet shamefacedly illiterate, bought in wholesale to mislead one’s friends into believing one cares for higher things than horses and baccarat. I tried to imagine his Indian rugs replaced with dull mats; a blank wall where his Blessed Damozel once hung; the garden of The Strawberry Thief little more than yet another suburban lawn. Time and again I burned his rooms to ashes in my mind, burned him out of them to burn them from my memories. I wanted to set his inferno ablaze and in turn set myself free of him…
Adapting the Raffles stories: “The Chest of Silver” 1977
The ‘77 TV series is without hesitation the most faithful screen adaptation of the Raffles stories that exists. It kept close, even word-by-word, to the original short stories in many instances, while taking liberties and making changes in others. These changes were sometimes in order to make an Earls Court story fit into the Albany era, sometimes to expand a story too short to adapt to a 50 minute episode.
“The Chest of Silver”, the fifth episode in the series, is a very interesting one in the order. Most scenes follow the dialogue of the book closely, and the plot strays very little from the original from the start in Raffles’ room to his return and reveal. However, at this point, the series takes a turn and does what it does best – it takes what was an unresolved piece of the story, develops it, and brings it to a conclusion.
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In fine, this particular exploit entirely justified itself in my eyes, in spite of the superfluous (but invariable) secretiveness which I could seldom help resenting in my heart I never thought less of it than in the present instance; and my one mild reproach was on the subject of the phantom Crawshay.
“You let me think he was in the air again,” I said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me to find that you had never heard of him since the day of his escape through your window.”
“I never even thought of him, Bunny, until you came to see me the day before yesterday, and put him into my head with your first words. The whole point was to make you as genuinely anxious about the plate as you must have seemed all along the line.”
“Of course I see your point,” I rejoined; “but mine is that you labored it. You needn’t have written me a downright lie about the fellow.”
“Nor did I, Bunny.”
“Not about the 'prince of professors’ being 'in the offing’ when you left?”
“My dear Bunny, but so he was!” cried Raffles. “Time was when I was none too pure an amateur. But after this I take leave to consider myself a professor of the professors. And I should like to see one more capable of skippering their side!”
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As his custom is, Hornung ends the story on rather unresolved feelings, leaving the reader to imagine for themselves the next beat in the conversation.
Below is the same scene in the TV episode, moved to later in the evening and to the club instead of continuing the conversation in Bunny’s rooms after Raffles’ reveal - giving Bunny some more time to reflect on recent events, after having already been upset over Raffles’ treatment of him and then forgiven him for it.
Writer Philip Mackie, however, decided to take it further. In the next scene we find Bunny sitting miserable on his bed, with the same whiskey decanter we saw nearly full earlier in the day now nearly empty. Raffles enters, and this time it is harder to brush off Bunny’s grievances.
The next day Raffles keeps his promise (in his own way…) by letting Bunny know at the last minute that Inspector Mackenzie is on his way, while all the stolen silver is in the cases Bunny just picked up at the station.
After a nervous Bunny trying to hide the silver and some tense moments of Raffles avoiding a cheerful Mackenzie to discover the real contents of his cricket bag, the episode ends with Bunny agreeing that Raffles indeed knows his rabbit best and should decide what to tell him and what to not.
If the conclusion is satisfactory or not can be debated, but at least Bunny has been given some more space to voice his opinions and feelings. And, perhaps even more, Raffles is given the chance to tell both Bunny and the audience that he does hold his “right-hand man” and “partner” in rather high regard. (The same thing can be said for “The Spoils of Sacrilege”, which works much in the same way, but with a perhaps even more interesting objective - but that I will have to get to another day.)
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(clips and screenshots colour restored by @the-prince-of-professors - please do not download and repost!)
ahh thank you for comparing the episode to the story! I so admire that they made space for Bunny’s side of things in the show. We don’t get Bunny as the writer and narrator, but he is Raffles’s tower of strength and his partner and his feelings matter just as much as Raffles and the rest of the plot!
(I think they inadvertently made me crave emotional honesty like this in other media i watch. It would be easier to be lazy about their emotional attachment and make them be mean and cutting the other down, which seems to be cool in tv nowadays? but instead they made them so soft and loving. No wonder this episode is so beloved. )
