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The Southwark Sling

The Flannigan Flyer

Flannigan had an obsessive love of riding the trendy new "Elevatrix", or "lift." One of Victorian England's biggest novelties, electric and elderly Irishman-drawn "Elevatrices" arrived in London to great fanfare. The wealthy elite and government began, at the height of the heady 1856 trend, installing them wherever there was the slightest incline or step. Flannigan was entranced by the simple mechanics involved--With the activation of a pulley by an "electric" "motor" or the waltz on a treadmill by an "elderly Irishman," one could get to a desired location of altitude in mere minutes. Flannigan loved the elation whilst in the comfort of a cramped and rickety lift cab, soaring into the heavenly bowels of a tall building. The elation was intense enough that, rather than his quarter-hour tea breaks, Micheal would rush to the nearest lift.

In direct conflict with his obsessive love of constant lift riding was his obsessive love of breakfast sauerkraut. The close confinement of several polite Victorians for several quiet minutes in a lift cab whilst being elevated made it exceedingly difficult, nay, impossible, to release and dilute the bubbling cabbage and vinegar brew that steeped in one's small intestine.

Oh yes, a touch of the gastrics made for some mighty difficult situations for Mr. Flannigan.

One such occasion, while riding aloft with the Prussian Consulate and his charming wife, Edna, the reverberation and subsequent odor of a gaseous release very nearly made for a moment of crushing embarrassment. His reputation as a gentleman on the line, Flannigan vowed that he would never again have to leap from an engaged fourth-story lift carriage.

Returning home, he set his inventive mind to work.

Flannigan had two clear choices: Give up sauerkraut breakfasts, or cease riding the lifts of London.

He chose to do neither.

Into the wee hours of that warm June night he worked. Pensively pacing across his laboratory. Sketches littered his desk and floor. Cup of tea after cup of tea would pass through him until, as dawn broke, the idea of a lifetime struck him like an epiphanal bolt of lightning. Flannigan, his eyes nearly boiling over with tears, grabbed his notebook and began writing feverishly.

With sweat dripping from his sodden brow onto the pages, his miracle invention took shape. Solving, in a matter of twenty-three and one half problem-solving minutes, he had solved one of the most fantastically insolvent solutions in all of solutiondom (1).

Officially, according to the patent records of 1856, Flannigan's "Application for the process of the prevarication of flatulent deeds I am proud of and/or responsible for not" was the first example of a non-tangible patent. At last, the ability to actually pin lift flatulence on others was a reality. Spreading faster than, and nearly in the same fashion as, a syphilitic wildfire, the basic technique behind this technology quickly gained widespread use. Alas, few actually would license this fantastic patent (save The Catford Brothel Union Local 424).

An illustration from Flannigan's patent, depicting the location from where prevarication orignates.

The wording used to describe the technology in Flannigan's patent was, unfortunately, too specific: "...used only in cases of such that flatulence occurs in a lift powered by an Elderly Irishman on a treadmill.", for example.

To boot, the utilization of this patent alone allows for its users to deny any and all knowledge of the process described in the patent. Flannigan would, yet again, be cheated from his rightful place among history's greatest inventors.

Although the invention increased Flannigan's fame and fortune by a negligible margin, his idea solved the problem that he set out to conquer. Riding the lifts of London and consuming his coveted sauerkraut breakfasts would resume full steam ahead, as it were, and be possible without any further dangerous leaping or flatulence-derived embarrassment.

EPILOGUE:

The Prussian Consulate, subsequent to Flannigan's patent, was known among Europe's elite social circles as the windiest Gentleman in European politics. Today, archivists refer to Flannigan's patent 5832 of 1856 as the forerunner of the lift-common "it wasn't me" and, to a lesser extent, the modern-day lie.

--"Scholarship" by The FikKid

Notes:

1) also known as west Bromwich. [back]