Inventory Priestley & Lightning

Priestley’s experiments with electricity could indeed have caused havoc with the neighbors, and controversy in England. Barbauld references a work of René LeSage, Le Diable Boiteux, in which a spirit named Asmodeus is released from a laboratory and disturbs the neighbors by removing the roofs of their houses in order to expose their private lives (McCarthy and Kraft 74). Although Priestley’s experiments with electricity did nothing like that they often involved live animals, and the harm they suffered was an increasingly important topic of debate in the eighteenth century. Bellanca describes the effects of his experiments and quotes Priestley’s History of Electricity at times, writing:

When [Priestley] tried a larger shock on the head of a dog, “all his limbs were extended, he fell backwards, and lay without any motion, or sign of life, for about a minute.” After half an hour of convulsions, the dog “kept discharging a great quantity of saliva; and there was also a great flux of rheum from his eyes, on which he kept putting his feet; though in other respects he lay perfectly listless.” The dog survived in this condition until the next day, when Priestley “dispatched [him], by shooting him through the hinder part of his head. (56)

Priestley's Electric Machine

Priestley wrote The History of Electricity in the mid-1760's, before Barbauld wrote this poem as well as “The Mouse’s Petition” (Schofield 143). Since Priestley and Barbauld corresponded and she took interest in his experiments, it seems likely that she would have known about incidents like the one described above. Barbauld’s choice not to address this issue directly is interesting given that some scholars read “The Mouse’s Petition” as a radical plea for animal rights.

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