Notes p. 5 East London Observer, 15 June 1878. p. 7 The Parrot-Keeper’s Guide by an Experienced Dealer, 1851; W.T. Greene, Parrots in Captivity, 1883. p. 10 Text taken from plaque on the wall of West India Dock; sugar, barley-sugar temples, riches of the universe, counting houses, from George Sala, The Hours of the Day and Night in London (1859);‘The plunderer’ from statements made by George Hibbert, plantation owner and Chairman of the West India Dock Company. p. 11 ‘a room full of rain’: based on Frank Buckland’s description of hearing caged grass parakeets in Curiosities of Natural History, 1868. p. 12 Draws on ‘Cage-making’, in W.A. Blakston, The Illustrated Book of Canaries and Cage Birds, 1878. p. 21 Robert Boyle, Experiment 41, 1744. p. 23 ‘translated shoes’: old shoes repaired and sold as new. Henry Mayhew, Letter xxxv, 1850. p. 24 Based on material at www.stgitehistory.org.uk and www. victorianlondon.org. p. 32 Relics of Sir John Franklin’s last Arctic expedition, 1845– 8, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Object ID AAA2114: ‘Leather wallet containing… two sheets of paper with a narrative written backwards.’ p. 44 [We have] ‘nowhere to be but in words’: Bejan Matur, ‘The Island, Myself and the Laurel’, in In the Temple of a Patient God, trans. Ruth Christie. Arc, 2004. p. 45 ‘I called them clocks’: Robert Rauschenberg on his White Paintings. p. 52 Relics of Sir John Franklin’s last Arctic expedition, 1845– 8, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Object ID 69