On 17 October 1814 catastrophe struck at Meux’s Brewery on Tottenham Court Road London.  Eight people lost their lives when a vat full of beer burst, releasing 3,555 barrels of liquid.  The shock demolished the brick wall of the brew-house which was 25 feet high and 22 inches deep and caused a substantial part of the roof to fall in.  The cock of the adjoining vat was broken and the contents poured out, adding to the flood of beer. 

 

 

A brewery in happier times – image taken from George Cruikshank, The House that Jack built ... (London, 1853) shelfmark 11647.g.15

 

Those who died were named as:
Eleanor Cooper aged 14, servant to Richard Hawes of the Tavistock Arms, Great Russell Street
Mary Mulvey, a married woman aged 30, and her son Thomas Murry aged 3 by a former husband
Hannah Banfield aged 4
Sarah Baten aged 3
Ann Saville aged 60
Elizabeth Smith, a married woman aged 27
Catherine Butler, a widow aged 65

Richard Hawes gave evidence at the coroner’s inquest held on Wednesday 19 October that he was in the tap room of the Tavistock Arms at 5.30pm on the previous Monday when he heard a crash. The back part of his house was beaten in and everything in his cellar destroyed. Beer was pouring into his pub and across the street.  Eleanor Cooper was in the yard washing pots and her body was dug out from the ruins nearly three hours later. She was found standing by the water butt.

One little girl lost her mother, brother and grandmother in the accident.  They were buried and suffocated in the kitchen of a house in New Street adjacent to the brew-house. She escaped because she had just been given permission to go out to play in the street.

Others suffered serious injuries: the brewery superintendent and one of the labourers were taken to Middlesex Hospital and were reported to be ‘in a dangerous way’. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict that the victims had met with their deaths ‘casually, accidentally, and by misfortune’.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
British Newspaper Archive - Nottingham Gazette 28 October 1814, Liverpool Mercury 28 October 1814

 

Collectively, the member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council now form one of the largest and most lucrative markets in the world for the global arms industry.

However, eighty years ago, in 1934, the situation was dramatically different.  For example, Kuwait did not possess a formal military force at all at that time and the oil deposits which have since given the country enormous wealth had not been discovered, let alone exploited. Politically meanwhile, the British Empire was still very much in the ascendancy in the Persian Gulf. The US, in common with all other foreign powers, was barred by Britain from establishing any formal diplomatic presence or representation in Kuwait. Nevertheless, files in the India Office Records held at the British Library, reveal that even then – in a pre-cursor to the US’ later hegemonic position –American arms companies had begun to target Kuwait as a potential market for the sale of their goods.

Kafka’s first letter - IOR/R/15/1/505, f 175.  The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

In January 1934, Otto Kafka, President of Otto Kafka Incorporated, New York wrote two letters addressed to the Minister of War in Kuwait. Since Kuwait did not actually have a Minister of War (or equivalent), the letters were instead delivered to its ruler, Shaikh Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah.

The first letter – written in “a spirit of cooperation” – extolls the virtues of ‘Disston Impenetra’ steel and underlines the role it can play in protecting “invaluable life in combat” not only with the “potential enemy across the border” but also the “just as dangerous and more sinister, domestic enemy who threatens established institutions, law and order”. The letter remarks that “[i]t takes twenty-one years and more to produce and develop an efficient combatant and only the fraction of a second to extinguish his life”.

In the second letter, Kafka describes in detail the specifications of the Disston Six Ton Tractor-Tank; “a combination of war and peace machine” that had reportedly “created a sensation in military and police circles”. Kafka stresses the tank’s small size and suitability for use in city streets and “difficult war terrain”.

Kafka’s second letter - IOR/R/15/1/505, f 176. The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

Accompanying Kafka’s letters was a glossy promotional pamphlet in which it is  proudly stated that the ‘tractor-tank’ possesses chemical warfare capabilities and could be be equipped ‘with a giant military candle filled with smoke, tear or vomiting gas’. Notwithstanding Kafka’s polished sales pitch it appears that his attempt to interest Kuwait in his company’s products failed and no purchases were made.

The “Disston Six Ton Tractor-Tank” – IOR/R/15/1/505, f 178. The copyright status is unknown. Please contact [email protected] with any information you have regarding this item.

When reporting the incident to his seniors, Harold Dickson, the British Political Agent in Kuwait, remarked sardonically that Otto Kafka’s attempt was “not a very edifying procedure when their Government (the U.S.A) is supposed to be taking the leading part in the world today to try and stop war etc”.

Dickson’s letter –  IOR/R/15/1/505, f 174

 

Louis Allday, Gulf History Specialist      
British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

@Louis_Allday

 

On this day 100 years ago the German Navy authorised a bombing raid on London using five Zeppelins. This was not the first raid which had been carried out against Great Britain. The first bombs fell on the night of the 19-20 January 1915 over Great Yarmouth, Sheringham and King’s Lynn. The first raid on London occurred on 31 May 1915. The Zeppelins gained the name ‘Baby-killers’ after the death of three year old Elsie Leggett in her home in Stoke Newington.

It was during the First World War that Germany became the first nation to conduct aerial bombings against Great Britain. These were carried out in airships, which were long cylindrical rigid structures filled with gas. The first type of airship constructed was called a Zeppelin after its inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin and these were the main type of airship used during the First World War. 

 

The German Zeppelin LZ 18 (L 2) at Berlin-Johannistal. Image source: Weltrundschau zu Reclams Universum 1913, Wikimedia Commons

On 13 October 1915 the Zeppelins appeared over the Norfolk coast at 18:30 but only one made it to London. This Zeppelin known as L 15 proceeded to bomb the area around Charing Cross including the Lyceum Theatre. 17 people were killed in this attack and 20 injured. The other Zeppelins, which did not make it to London, bombed Woolwich, Guildford, Tonbridge, Croydon, Hertford and an army camp near Folkestone. A total of 71 people were killed and 128 injured.

The Zeppelin bombings in London were witnessed by many of its residents including the boys of Princeton Street Elementary School. In the aftermath of the bombing raid of 13 October and a previous raid on 8 September the boys recorded their experiences of the bombings in two volumes now held at the British Library. In the accounts most of the boys were getting ready for bed, running errands or playing out on the street when the Zeppelins arrived, which suggests that Londoners had no prior warning of the attacks. The boys expressed both excitement and fear at the sight of the air ships and most went out to inspect the damage once they had left.

R. Beasley records how he was on his way to collect a parcel from his father when he saw a bomb explode near the Lyceum Theatre. He recalls how the man next to him had his arm blown off before he ran into the Theatre to seek shelter. Beasley goes on to reveal how his father was one of the injured in the blast and was taken to Charing Cross Hospital. 

 

Holborn schoolboys's impressions of Zeppelin Raids over London, Add MS 39528 f.2. 

 

E. Brown was asleep when the bombs started falling but was woken up by ‘a reverberating roar, like lions’. He got up to see what was happening and went downstairs where he caught sight of the Zeppelin. On seeing the guns firing at the Zeppelin, Brown headed for a closer look. The following morning he was annoyed that the Zeppelins had caused him to lose ‘3 hours of my sleep’ as well as the damage to the local area and Beasley’s father.

 

Holborn schoolboy's' impressions of Zeppelin Raids over London, Add MS 39528 f.4. 

 

The Zeppelin raids across Britain continued until 5 August 1918. During the course of the war British air defences improved and a number of Zeppelins were shot down. The photograph below shows the hull of L 33, which was damaged by an anti-aircraft shell and by night fighters. The Zeppelin was forced to land in Essex as the Captain judged that it would not have survived the flight across the North Sea. There were no fatalities. 

 

 India Office Official Record of the Great War - 'The wrecked Zeppelin brought down by our aviators near the coast of Essex. The skeleton of an airship which crashed in a field. 1915'. Photo 21

Laura Walker
Lead Curator, Modern Archives & Manuscripts 1851-1950

Further reading:
More information on the Zeppelin raids. The full accounts by R. Beasley and E. Brown can be found on The Library’s Digitised Manuscripts website.

 

On 11 October 1727 George II and his wife Caroline of Ansbach were crowned King and Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. The ceremony at Westminster Abbey was preceded by a magnificent procession.

  Part of an engraving of George II’s coronation procession, artist unknown, reproduced in Parliament Past and Present by A. Wright and P. Smith (London, 1902). 9502.dd.2.

The leading composer of the day, George Frideric Handel, was commissioned to write four coronation anthems, including the mighty ‘Zadok the Priest’. 

]

G.F. Handel: ‘Zadok the Priest’. R.M.20.h.5.

The original manuscripts of all four coronation anthems are preserved in the British Library and can now be seen on our Digitised Manuscripts website.

‘Zadok the Priest’ has been sung at coronations ever since. Here is a vintage recording from the coronation of George VI  in 1937, courtesy of the CHARM project at King’s College London.

Another document in the British Library reveals a more personal aspect of the ceremony for George II and Queen Caroline.  This account describes the moment that the Queen was anointed with oil and crowned:

There is a little handkerchief which the bedchamber-woman in waiting gives to the mistress of the robes, to wipe of any Oyl that might fall on the face. The Queen retires into St Edwards Chapel to offer her Crown and then the Mistress of the Robes assisted by the Bedchamber women pin on the Fine Crown appointed for her Majesty.

Account of Queen Caroline’s coronation. Add MS 22627.

Sandra Tuppen

Lead Curator of Modern Archives and Manuscripts 1601-1850

There are now two curators called Alex in the Modern Manuscripts and Archives department here at the British Library. One of us is a political historian looking after manuscripts from 1851-1950, the other is an art historian working with manuscripts between 1601-1850. We both get called 'The Other Alex' when colleagues are trying to differentiate between us.

Despite our historical leanings and the difficulties choosing just one item from our Manuscripts Collection to celebrate #NationalPoetryDay, we decided that as we both adore Samuel Taylor Coleridge's (1772-1834) Kubla Khan we would write a joint post about it. 

Add MS 50847 Fair Copy Manuscript of Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1797-1804.

In 1797 Coleridge was staying at Nether Stowey in Somerset near to his friends William and Dorothy Wordsworth with whom he took frequent walking tours in the surrounding countryside of the Quantocks. According to Coleridge in the published preface to the poem, it was during this time that he composed Kubla Khan. Whilst staying in a ‘lonely farm house between Porlock and Linton’ he took two grains of opium and fell asleep ‘in his chair’ while reading a copy of Purchas His Pilgrimage (1625). This four-volume compilation of travel narratives was written by the English clergyman Samuel Purchas (1577-1626) and contained historical, religious and geographical descriptions of China including  Xandu, the summer palace of the great Chinese Emperor and Mogol ruler, Kublai Khan (1215-1294). Purchas described Xandu as:

‘A marvellous and artificial Palace of Marble and other stones… In this inclosure or Parke are goodly Meadowes, springs, rivers, red and fallow Deere, Fawnes carried thither for the Hawkes… In the middest in a faire Wood hee hath built a royall House on pillars gilded and varnished, on every of which is a Dragon all gilt’.

According to Coleridge, these passages on Xandu inspired the vivid opium dream that followed and that would go on to form the basis of his poem. As he recollected in his preface, ‘he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 'Purchas's Pilgrimes': 'Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto: and thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.'

Upon waking, he ‘instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines’ that were inspired by the dream:

‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.’

Before he was able to finish the poem, Coleridge was interrupted ‘by a person on business from Porlock’ and when he returned to his room his visions had ‘passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone had been cast’. Clearly, the opium had worn off. As a result the poem remains an unfinished fragment but it is sumptuously rich in its language, meter, and imagery.

Sadly, we don’t own the original manuscript that Coleridge wrote in his opium induced reverie, but the British Library does hold an early fair copy (a neat copy) of the manuscript containing some corrections and later revisions. Coleridge wrote this on two sides of blue-tinted paper, in preparation for sending to the printer. On the manuscript, beneath the poem, Coleridge has described how the poem came into being:

“This fragment with a good deal more, not recoverable, composed, in a sort of Reverie brought on by two grains of Opium, taken to check a dysentery, at a Farm House between Porlock and Linton, a quarter of a mile from Culbone Church, in the fall of the year, 1797. S.T. Coleridge.”

Although Coleridge recited the poem in the presence of friends on several occasions, he did not publish it until nearly 20 years after its composition. It was Lord Byron who encouraged Coleridge in its publication and it was finally included in Poems (1816), in which Coleridge referred to it as ‘a psychological curiosity’. Despite taking so long to come to press, it has nevertheless become one of the nation’s favorite poems and we in the manuscripts department are very privileged to care for this unique document.

The British Library has an exciting and extensive collection of manuscripts by important British poets many of which have been digitised and include works by John Keats, William Wordsworth, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Alexander Lock, Curator, Modern Historical Manuscripts and Archives 1851-1950
Alexandra Ault, Curator, Modern Historical Manuscripts and Archives 1601-1850

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every year the India Office launched a round of tests and examinations to find suitable candidates for service in British India. The files on these examinations, in the India Office Records at the British Library, can make interesting reading. One example is the file on the examinations for Indian Forest Department appointments in 1880.

Photo 211/2(5)  Samuel Bourne - Forests around Darjeeling  Images Online

Forty candidates applied in response to advertisements placed in leading newspapers and in the Journal of Forestry. Each candidate had an interview at the India Office on 8 January 1880, with physical examinations held the next day. Three candidates failed the medical; two were declared unfit and the other withdrew on being informed that his physical powers were imperfect.

The remaining 37 candidates were instructed to meet the examiner, Mr Sladen, at Jack Straw’s Castle in Hampstead at 9 am on Saturday 10 January 1880, where breakfast was provided. They then set out on a brisk 5½ hour walk around north London, taking in Highgate, Hornsey, Muswell Hill, Colney Hatch, Pymmes Brook to Edmonton, through Tottenham and up Lordship Lane back to Hornsey and Highgate, finishing at Hampstead. In the course of the walk, the candidates were exercised in running, fence jumping, and vaulting over five barred gates. Mr Sladen was pleased to report that all the candidates went through the test to his satisfaction, and arrived at the end of the 20 mile walk with only a few minutes interval between the first and the last.

The academic examinations were held on 12 January 1880, with the candidates being tested in arithmetic, compound addition, orthography, handwriting, English composition, algebra, geometry, plane trigonometry, botany, mechanics, physics, chemistry, surveying, plan drawing, French translation and oral, geology and mineralogy, and freehand drawing.

Map of forests in Gujarat from ‘Teak forests of India’ by Hugh Falconer, 1852, IOR/V/23/92 no 9

 

Eleven candidates failed in French, including three Scotsmen and some of the most robust candidates from northern and rural districts. This was the cause of some regret amongst India Office officials, with one commenting ‘I am not myself in favour of the French schooling; and am sorry we have lost these sturdy young Scotchmen’. Another wrote more bluntly that he would have preferred one or two healthy Scots to pale-faced Londoners! It was decided to ask the Civil Service Commissioners if the examination could in future be modified with regard to the standard expected for French.

Overall the standard in the 1880 examinations was reported to have been considerably higher than the previous year, and the top six performing candidates were recommended to the Secretary of State for India for nomination to the Indian Forest Service. The successful candidates in order were 1st Harold Martin Reed, 2nd George Homfray, 3rd Hugh Murray, 4th Herbert Slade (who had narrowly missed out in the last examination, coming 8th), 5th Henry Jackson Aylmer Porter and 6th Albert Wyndham Lushington.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
File R 127/1880 - Examination of candidates for the Indian Forest Department, held in January 1880 [IOR/L/E/6/4, File 127]

 

On World Animal Day we tell a story with a moral – never tease an elephant.

A keeper riding his elephant - from Add. 27255, f.117v Tashrih al-aqvam, an account of origins and occupations of some of the sects, castes and tribes of India. Images Online

In 1823 merchant and traveller Gordon Forbes Davidson arrived in Java, 'a lovely and magnificent island’.  He later wrote a memoir Trade and travel in the Far East in which he described his exploration of Solo and Djokjakarta. At Solo he went with a group of friends to see the Emperor’s tigers. One was ‘in the position usually chosen by a dog when he wants to warm his face by the fire’.  Hearing the visitors’ approach, the tiger stared at them and then jumped with his whole force against the wooden bars of his enclosure: ‘The shock shook the building, as well as our nerves, not a little, though we were of course scatheless’.

Moving on by gig to Djokjakarta, Davidson visited the Palace where the Sultan kept three elephants.  Davidson and his party amused themselves by giving the elephants fruit and ‘other dainties’.  However one of the friends spent some time teasing one elephant, offering a plantain and then withdrawing it just as the poor animal was about to get hold of the fruit with its trunk.  As they were leaving, the keeper of the tormented elephant arrived with a couple of coconuts.  The elephant took one and ‘with a wicked look at the gentleman who had been teasing him, threw the nut at him with great force’. Fortunately the coconut missed its target and smashed into a post six inches away from the teaser’s head: ‘had it struck where doubtless it was meant to do, it would certainly have proved as fatal as an eighteen-pound shot’. Davidson concluded his anecdote: ’So much for teasing elephants.  We beat a speedy retreat, not choosing to risk a second shot’.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
G F Davidson, Trade and travel in the Far East, or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, Singapore, Australia and China (London, 1846)

 

Visit Animal Tales – a free British Library exhibition open until Sunday 1 November 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is the anniversary of Sir Edwin Landseer’s (1802-1873) death.  One individual who, perhaps, might perhaps not have mourned Landseer’s earthly departure was his one-time friend and colleague, the engraver Charles George Lewis (1808-1880). Landseer was good friends with Lewis’s father and having known him since he was a child, Lewis went on to engrave a large number of paintings by Landseer, many of which were owned by Queen Victoria (r.1837-1901). Their close working relationship, however, was soured by petty squabbles and disputes over the engravings – disputes that would ultimately lead to the courts of law.

Envelope from a letter to Charles George Lewis from Sir Edwin Landseer, Add MS 38608

The British Library holds a volume of letters and beautifully addressed envelopes from Landseer to Lewis, Add MS 38608, which not only document the working relationship between the two men, but hint at their long-running battle tainted with bitterness and threats of legal action.

One letter dated 7 June 1855 is a frustrated plea from Landseer to Lewis asking to gain access to an engraving that Lewis had made after his work:

‘I can only repeat my request to have the touched proof sent here. It appears quite feasible (and not unreasonable) . . . to add a little work to the engraving . . . I must have an opportunity of looking again at the work with the picture and that touched impression. . . Your lawyer wrote me a most improper letter to me last occasion . . .  I also requested you to show Mr Graves my touched proofs – he tells me he has not yet seen it . . . Send me the proof I ask you or take later . . . consequences of law.’

Across the top of the letter and along the bottom of the second page, Lewis has scrawled  ’Lies  . . . All Lies’. 

 

Envelope from a letter to Charles George Lewis from Sir Edwin Landseer, Add MS 38608

Landseer was not the only one Lewis managed to upset. Lewis’ annotations on other letters in the volume hint at disagreements with patrons and dealers, notably with  the publisher and print seller Henry Graves (1806-1892) and the collector, MP, and chemist Jacob Bell (1810-1859). They should not have been surprised by Lewis’s awkward nature. They were all friends with Landseer and had observed his frustrations. By the end, both sides appeared to wish the other dead. On the verso of a letter from Landseer dated October 1855, Lewis has triumphantly written ‘. . . concerning the lawsuit brought against me by Graves, Bell  . . .  told me “he would crave me to shuffle off my mortal coil”. [But] He, Bell, was dead in a year after!!!!’

Charles George Lewis by Marshall Claxton, 1864, NPG 890, National Portrait Gallery, London

 

Alexandra Ault
Curator Modern Archive and Manuscripts 1601-1850