Anika enjoyed being alone in her family's narrow stone home on a small lane off Lindengracht. With six children and her loud, boysterous husband Dirk, it was hard to think straight sometimes let alone get the chores done. Anika hummed to herself while she finished chopping vegetables for a stew.
But something was amiss. It was rare for her children or husband not to make an appearance for so long. And the usual din of voices from the street along the canal seemed to have risen in pitch. She took off her apron and went to investigate.
A crowd had gathered along both banks of the canal. In contrast to the shady lane and her cool house, the open canal was hot in the summer afternoon and it stank to high heavens of sewage and garbage.
Someone had tied a line across the canal and from it hung a live eel writhing and twisting in the sun. Slowly a small boat approached with two men, one rowing and the other standing on the stern, eye on the prize.
As the boat approached the eel, the crowd began to cheer and hoot. Anika's heart sank, when she realized it was Dirk who was getting ready to try to pull the eel down.
Dirk's shirt was soaked through with sweat and unbuttoned halfway revealing his hairy chest. He had a wide grin across his face, clearly encouraged by his audience. His eyes remained fixed on the prize.
When the eel got within reach he wrapped two big calloused hands around it and began to yank in earnest. The rower stilled the boat best he could but it pitched and tossed as Dirk wrestled the eel, grunting and swearing as it slipped out of his grip again and again.
The crowd went wild.
"Oh nee," whispered Anika to herself. She longed to look away but she couldn't. She felt a tug on her skirts. Her children had found her and gathered around.
"Het is papa!" squealed her youngest.
"Ja..." was all Anika could manage in response.
Suddenly Dirk fell back, landing in the canal with a splash. Anika, her children and the neighbors lining the banks all gasped in surprise. But the eel hadn't slipped out of Dirk's hands. He surfaced with a laugh, holding the eel up in triumph. The wriggling creature was still tied to the line which had gone slack.
It took everyone a moment to determine what had happened.
"Daar!" yelled a man pointing to a policeman who stood holding a pair of cutters by the post that had held the line.
A roar of anger rose from the crowd and they began to close in on the policeman.
"Komen!" said Anika to her children and quickly shuttled them back inside the house and shut the door.
"Papa!" wailed the youngest. Anika looked out the front window to see her husband pull himself out of the canal and gleefully join in the fray.
"Papa zal komen," she said to them trying to block out the rising pitch of cries from the street.
"Kom eten," she said and laid dinner on the table.
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Greetings from Amsterdam!
The Palingoproer or Eel riot took place in 1886. The riots started when the police tried to thwart playing the forbidden game of eel pulling on the Lindengracht. In the uproar that followed, 26 people were killed. The army had to be called in. Social historians place the events in a context of social tensions as a result of increasing socio-economic differences in 19th-century Amsterdam society.
Eel pulling was banned by the government as "cruel public entertainment".
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