Untold lives blog

Cityread London, which launched this week, will run throughout April with events in every London borough; aimed to promote reading for pleasure and also to encourage Londoners to contemplate their city’s history.  Each year Cityread London selects a book for the whole capital to read together and for 2014 this is My Dear I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young, selected to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One.  Louisa will be speaking about this at a Cityread London event at the British Library on 14 April.

Also as part of the Cityread London event programme, several public libraries are hosting a production by the District 6 Theatre Group, on the role and experience of soldiers of colour in World War One; exploring the contribution made by people of all colours, ethnicities, religious beliefs and nationalities to the British war effort in World War One, whether by serving in the armed forces or providing material and financial resources.  You can see this performance on these dates at the following libraries:

15 April - Richmond Lending Library

22 April - Barking Learning Centre 

24 April – Dagenham Library

28 April – Battersea Library

30 April - Wembley Library

Photo 24/(122) An Indian Cavalry horse hospital in a French factory, 1915. 
 

It is encouraging to hear that Cityread London 2014 events are including these narratives; as non-white non-European experiences of World War One have traditionally been given less media coverage than other aspects of the war.  For researchers interested in this topic, there is a wealth of material in the British Library’s India Office Records with information about the stories of South Asian soldiers serving in the British Indian Army  during World War One; we blogged about some of these stories previously in posts Indian soldiers’ views of England during World War I, An Indian soldier in France during World War I, and The Indian Sepoy in the trenches.  Furthermore last month we wrote about the experiences of Indian Muslims travelling from India to Mecca as part of the Hajj during World War One  in the post Pilgrim traffic during the First World War.

Stella Wisdom
Digital Curator

Further reading 

World War One sources on the British Library website

To celebrate World Theatre Day we have the story of an East India Company sea captain performing the title role in Richard III at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 17 January 1803. 

Captain James Peter Fearon was born in London on 17 February 1773, the son of two well-known actors, James Fearon and his wife Mary. James Fearon died at Richmond aged 43 on 30 September 1789, leaving a widow and eight children between the ages of sixteen and nearly one.   Benefit performances were held in theatres to raise money for the family, with the Duke of Clarence contributing 20 guineas.

Eldest son James Peter was serving as a midshipman on the East India Company ship Queen at the time of his father’s death.  Perhaps an influential patron with whom his father had come into contact had helped to place the boy in a potentially lucrative career?  James Peter progressed steadily upwards through the ranks of ship’s officer, and was appointed captain of the East Indiaman Belvedere for her voyage to China from May 1801 to September 1802. 

His brothers also secured positions with the East India Company. Peter Fearon was appointed an officer cadet in the Bombay Army in 1799, and John Douglas Fearon was a cadet for Madras in 1807.  Two of his sisters became the wives of Company men and a third married a Royal Army officer in India.

 
David Garrick (1717-1774) as Richard III Images Online 

Captain Fearon’s theatrical debut as Richard III was well-received by the large number of sailors in the audience and by the press.  He gave the performance twice more in January.  The Monthly Mirror believed that he could have a stage career as there was ‘much genius’ in his performance notwithstanding the blemishes. His voice was described as ‘uncommonly powerful, but not so melodious’ and he was praised for his ‘freedom of deportment, confidence, feeling, and unabating spirit’. However Fearon was criticised for hurrying through many of the most significant soliloquies as if he did not understand their meaning: ‘He appears, throughout, to be running a race with the character, and frequently gets the start of it’. The Morning Post wrote that the Captain’s face was capable of very little variety of expression, yet he had the great recommendation of being no imitator but a truly original Richard.

This triumph was followed on 9 February 1803 with Fearon’s appearance at Drury Lane as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.  Sadly this performance to a meagre audience was not well received. His portrayal of ‘deep and gloomy malignancy’ was described as feeble.

Captain Fearon was facing financial ruin as he trod the boards. He was declared bankrupt in February 1803. He was subsequently licensed as a free mariner by the East India Company and sailed for Bombay in 1807.  In another change of career Fearon purchased the Bombay Gazette in 1810, but this appears to have been an unsuccessful venture.  James Peter Fearon was living as a mariner in Calcutta when he died at sea in 1821. His will was proved in India, leaving his property to be divided between his mother and sisters.

Margaret Makepeace
Curator, East India Company Records 

Further reading:

British Newspaper Archive - for example Morning Post 18 January 1803 and 29 January 1803

The Monthly Mirror vol XV (1803)

Philip H. Highfill, Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses musicians, dancers, managers and other stage personnel in London, 1660-1800 (1973-1993)

Find my Past for the Fearon family in India -

Cadet Papers of Peter Fearon IOR/L/MIL/9/110 f.401

Cadet Papers of John Douglas Fearon L/MIL/9/108 ff.562-63

Estate papers of James Peter Fearon IOR/L/AG/34/29/33 p.1057; IOR/L/AG/34/27/76 p. 982

William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) was a Victorian scholar who is today best known for the invention of photography, specifically the process whereby a negative is used to make any number of positive images onto photographic paper.

 
British Library: Fox Talbot Collection  

What is perhaps not so well known is that Talbot excelled in and made significant contributions to many diverse fields of research including Assyriology, astronomy, botany, etymology, mathematics, philology, photography, photolithography, and science.  He also found time for a short political career, business ventures, management of the family estate and raising a family.

The British Library has catalogued Talbot’s notebooks plus 4,000 additional items including books, pocket notebooks, pamphlets, published papers, patents, loose notes, printers’ proofs, accounts, invoices, receipts, herbaria and other material. These additional items will soon be released to researchers and Untold Lives will be highlighting material showing different sides of Talbot and his life and times.  We start today with Talbot’s short political career.

Although Talbot was only involved in politics from 1832 to 1835, those years were a time of great social and political change in England. Standing as a candidate for parliamentary reform in the 1831 election, Talbot received just 39 votes. However, this was out of a total number of 129 entitled voters so the result was deemed a success by political reformers and a song was written in his honour.  

 British Library: Fox Talbot Collection 

  British Library: Fox Talbot Collection
Talbot’s copy of the 1831 electoral result with those who voted for him highlighted in red. There was no secret ballot so those eligible to vote could be bribed or coerced especially if the candidate was their landlord.

The 1831 Parliamentary reform bill failed and another election was held in 1832. Talbot was elected supporting the reformist Whig government. From 1832 to 1834 several important bills were passed including the Reform Act of 1832 which extended the voting franchise; the Agricultural Labourers Act 1832 which regulated wages and set a minimum wage; and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.

  British Library: Fox Talbot Collection  This document dated 5 April 1831 shows that one of the ideas of the Reform Act of 1832 had already been decided upon - the right to vote depending up on the ownership of property to the value of £10. Though this bill was much criticised it did extend the voting franchise and paved the way for further reforms.

British Library: Fox Talbot Collection  The list of wages for employable people, at the bottom of the page, includes boys as young as 10.

British Library: Fox Talbot Collection  Slavery Abolition Act 1833 The document calls for Talbot’s attendance in Parliament for the slavery vote and hints at the machinations of political life at the time.

Interference from King William IV meant that several governments were formed and then dissolved in quick succession 1832-1834. In this speech made in 1834 Talbot warns of economic and social damage resulting from this instability and the threat this poses to the effective implementation of the reforms just passed.

British Library: Fox Talbot Collection

Talbot became disillusioned with politics and when an election was called in 1835 he declined to stand for re-election and thereafter maintained only a mild interest in politics.

Jonathan Pledge
Cataloguer, Historical Papers 

The British public first glimpsed the domestic interiors established by East India Company men and women in India through portraits. Although many artists situated their subjects in verandahs or out in Indian gardens, some painters chose interior settings.  These early peeks soon became unsatisfactory as greater numbers of Britons (including women) embarked for India in the early 19th century. At this point, demand grew for information about life in India.

While early books relied on text to enlarge on topics as diverse as the prevalence of white ants and the dangers posed by tigers, in the 1810s they also came to include images. In 1842, for instance, William Tayler published Sketches Illustrating the Manners & Customs of the Indians and Anglo-Indians.  His employment in the Company allowed Tayler to claim particular knowledge of Anglo-Indian life in Bengal. His images and descriptions aimed to instruct British audiences at home but also contained inherent tensions, depicting both a desire to conform to British norms and a separate Anglo-Indian way of life.  They also hinted at the ways in which men and women might perform that Anglo-Indian identity differently.

‘The Young Civilians Toilet’, William Tayler, Sketches Illustrating the Manners & Customs of the Indians and Anglo-Indians (1842) 

In response to the ‘nabob controversy’ of the late eighteenth century, East India Company officials resident in India sought to justify their seemingly luxurious lifestyle. They explained their large retinues of servants by arguing that this was the best means by which they could enact their growing governance roles.  ‘The Young Civilians Toilet’ shows a domestic space with multiple Indian servants performing different tasks and a range of distinctively ‘British’ objects. Riding boots, saddle, gun case and ‘racquette’ remind us that ‘our hero is a sportsman’. A bill for jewellery suggests at his ‘matrimonial intentions’. Despite the rich sensuality of his present life, his affections are clearly suitably bestowed on the greyhound by his side, his beloved depicted in a portrait on the wall and his ‘favourite’ horse in a separate (but more central) portrait beside her.

 ‘The Young Lady’s Toilet’, William Tayler, Sketches Illustrating the Manners & Customs of the Indians and Anglo-Indians (1842) 

Tayler’s next image is of the young woman at the centre (or near centre) of ‘our hero’s’ affections. Again much attention is given to the servants waiting upon her.  Yet the objects in the room fail to assert a predominantly British character. While a portrait of a British soldier takes pride of place above her dressing table, the foreground is claimed by a fan and shawl.  A parrot sits in front of a Chinese lacquer screen, a reminder of the intra-Asian trade. Indian landscapes are referenced in a painting rather than homely scenes of Britain. A large punkah and a ‘striped cloth Purdah’ also hang in the room.

Tayler is commenting on the material strategies young Britons could use to continue to perform their national identities whilst highlighting their confident engagement with Indian practices. Yet it seems that their different genders presuppose different relationships with India and China. The objects in each room suggest that while the young man remains wedded to Britain, the young woman is in danger of becoming thoroughly entangled with Indian Ocean world. Tayler resolves this problem in a third engraving showing the pair married and sat at the breakfast table. British accoutrements safely surround the woman. Most significantly she now has a dog by her side – no doubt a gift from ‘our hero’. 

   ‘The Breakfast’, William Tayler, Sketches Illustrating the Manners & Customs of the Indians and Anglo-Indians (1842) Images Online

Kate Smith
Research Fellow, History, UCL

Further reading:

Thomas Williamson, The East India Vade-Mecum (London: Black, Parry and Kingsbury, 1810)

Charles D’Oyly, The Costume and Customs of Modern India (London: E. Orme, 1813)

William Tayler, Sketches Illustrating the Manners & Customs of the Indians & Anglo Indians (London: Thomas McLean, 1842)

Prasannajit de Silva, ‘Representing Home Life Abroad: British Domestic Life in Early-Nineteenth-Century India’, Visual Culture in Britain, 12:3 (2011)

E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, c.1800-1947 (Malden, MA and Cambridge: Polity, 2001)

David Porter, The Chinese taste in eighteenth-century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)

The young French dancer Auguste Vestris made his London debut on 16 December 1780 at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket (the capital’s opera house). He immediately drew audience attention through his combination of dance virtuosity, youth and good looks. The Morning Chronicle for 19 December 1780 tried to describe his talents:

It is impossible for words to convey an adequate idea of the strength, grace, and agility of this wonderful performer. … His entrechats were lofty and neat beyond imagination, and his balance appeared almost the effect of enchantment. Both in the serious and comic dances his attitudes were perfect models of elegance and picturesque expression.

Monsr. Vestris Junr. London Magazine, May 1781 (P.P.5437). 

Some months later, a pamphlet entitled An Heroic Epistle, from Mons. Vestris, Sen:  was published in London. Ostensibly written by his famous father Gaetan Vestris (but probably by the classical scholar John Nott), it was as much concerned with Vestris Junior’s  sex-appeal as his dancing prowess. After disparaging the home-grown dancers and dismissing other local entertainments, the writer turns to the new sensation whom he calls a ‘young Adonis’. The poem details the young man’s effect on the women in his audiences. Ogling the beautiful youth, one ‘hot matron’ exclaims  ‘Then what firm legs, and what delicious thighs!’.  

Signor Vestris Senr. London Magazine, April 1781 (P.P.5437)

Vestris Senior (then the leading dancer at the Paris Opera) did not appear at the King’s Theatre until 22 February 1781, when he and his son danced leading roles in the ballet Ninette à la Cour.  The performance was a benefit for Vestris Junior and drew vast crowds of would-be spectators. The London Courant and Westminster Chronicle for 23 February 1781 marvelled that ‘The passion for seeing a Frenchman dance, has thrown the town into a kind of delirium’. The opera house had been ‘literally besieged at five o’clock’ by people wanting tickets.  According to St James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post for 17-20 February 1781 the benefit was even mentioned during a debate in the House of Commons. So many members wished to attend that Parliament took a recess. On the night the theatre was so full that, inevitably, there was a disturbance when the curtain rose. Nevertheless the concluding ballet with its French stars was a great success. Auguste Vestris was said to have made £1000 from the performance. For the moment at least, he became London’s leading celebrity.

 Moira Goff
Curator Printed Historical Sources 1501-1800

Further reading

Judith Milhous, ‘Vestris-Mania and the Construction of Celebrity: Auguste Vestris in London, 1780-1781’, Harvard Library Bulletin, 5 (1994-5): 30-64.

Curtis Price, Judith Milhous, Robert D. Hume, Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London.  Vol. 1. The King’s Theatre, Haymarket, 1778-1791. Oxford, 1995.

On 10 February 1821 an advertisement appeared in the Caledonian Mercury which points to a dispute among Edinburgh’s dancing masters.  ‘Mr Strathy, Teacher of Dancing’ describes himself as ‘Successor to the late Mr Ritchie’ and offers lessons to Ritchie’s erstwhile pupils at the late dancing master’s premises in St James’s Square, Edinburgh as well as at his own rooms in South Hanover Street. Ritchie had died as recently as 4 February 1821. The Caledonian Mercury for 15 February 1821 carries an advertisement by ‘Mrs Ritchie, Widow of the late Mr. Wm. Ritchie’ asserting that her husband’s classes would be continued at St James’s Square by Messrs Dun.  They had been advertising classes in Edinburgh since at least 1812. Barclay Dun’s A Translation of Nine of the most Fashionable Quadrilles was published in Edinburgh in 1818. By September 1821, the Duns father and son were advertising their classes both in Hanover Street and St James’s Square so they must have established themselves as Ritchie’s successors. A Mr Dun is still advertising as late as 1839.

Plate from Alexander Strathy, Elements of the art of dancing. Edinburgh, 1822. 

Strathy, on the other hand, apparently disappears from the newspapers until a new advertisement in the Caledonian Mercury of 24 September 1821. He tells ‘the Nobility and Gentry’ that he is ‘just arrived from Paris and London, where he has acquired an additional variety of Steps, tastefully arranged for the Quadrille’. He offers private teaching in Hanover Street and announces his forthcoming treatise. The Caledonian Mercury for 17 January 1822 advertised the publication of Alexander Strathy’s Elements of the Art of Dancing with illustrations at a price of ‘5s.6d. boards’. The copy in the British Library retains its original binding with printed boards and has two pretty plates– one showing a young lady and the other a young gentleman ready to dance. The Caledonian Mercury for 19 September 1822 announces that ‘Mr Strathy has resumed his Classes and Private Teaching’, but there seem to be no subsequent advertisements by which to chart his later career.

Alexander’s Strathy’s treatise provides surprising insights into social dancing technique in early 19th century Britain. The steps and exercises he describes are very close to those still practised in ballet classes today. Young dancers of the early 1800s were obviously expected to take their dancing seriously.

Moira Goff
Curator Printed Historical Sources 1501-1800 

Further reading

Barclay Dun, A Translation of Nine of the most Fashionable Quadrilles. Edinburgh, 1818.

Alexander Strathy, Elements of the art of dancing. Edinburgh, 1822.

Sandra Noll Hammond, Ballet: beyond the Basics. Palo Alto, 1982

What would we do if the Thames froze over this winter? Would we hold a traditional Frost Fair, health and safety permitting?  The Thames froze over on at least 23 occasions between 1309 and 1814, and the most extensive freezes were recorded in 1683/4, 1715/16, 1739/40, 1789, and, for the last time, in February 1814. 

Why did the Thames freeze over then and not now? There are two main reasons: the temperatures were lower on average and remained lower for longer periods, and the architecture along the river was different, slowing down the water’s flow. The Old London Bridge was a stone building with nineteen arches, and all piers under the bridge were equipped with breakwaters to protect the bridge and the houses on top of it from the full force of the water. The river’s path was thereby slowed down, enabling the river to freeze in the right conditions. When the Old London Bridge was replaced in 1831 with a newer model with only five arches, the water was able to flow much faster, and the river never froze again near the centre of London.

 Frost Fair on the River Thames

When the ice on the river was solid enough Frost Fairs were held between the Old London Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge. The Fairs were spontaneous parties on the frozen river, and large numbers of people joined in. Tents were erected, made up of blankets held up by disused oars. There were temporary pubs on the ice with names such as ‘The City of Moscow’ or ‘The Wellington’,  whole oxen were roasted, and people could enjoy entertainments such as bull or bear baiting, roundabouts, and puppet-shows, or play football or other games. Of course not everyone was pleased and in the mood for a party when the river froze over. The watermen who usually ferried people across the water by boat did of course have to continue to make a living and therefore charged anyone who wanted to cross the frozen river.

 
 Frost Fair Printing Office

Frost Fairs were occasions to remember, and printing presses were brought on to the ice to print souvenirs for people who had visited them. In 1814 two types of presses were installed on the river, a hand-press for letterpress printing and a copperplate printing press. The British Library has a number of examples of these souvenirs which were ‘printed on the ice on the River Thames’ from all recorded Frost Fairs. The printing presses are very clearly visible in contemporary illustrations, showing that they were very much part of the occasion. In 1814 there was a 'Frost Fair Printing Office’ with a large crowd of people surrounding the letterpress printing press. The souvenirs usually contain a decorative border, a poem or other short text, and the visitor’s name.

  Frost Fair keepsake, printed on the Thames: 'Mrs Mary Coates'

We definitely wouldn’t bring old-fashioned printing presses on to the river if it did freeze again now, but I’m sure we would take pictures of each other and have other little souvenirs produced which would remind us of the once-in-a-lifetime visit to the frozen River Thames.

Karen Limper-Herz
Printed Historical Sources 

Illustrations taken from From A collection of bills, cuttings from periodicals, prints, etc. illustrating the fairs held on the Thames, during the winters of 1683-4, 1814, etc - reference 840.m.27.(1.)

Today is the anniversary of the death on 21 January 1950 of Eric Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell.  Andy Simons tells us about Orwell's collection of pamphlets which now have an online inventory to help researchers explore this fascinating resource.

George Orwell’s collection of mostly political ephemera was an important barometer of the social changes of the 1930s and 1940s, and a measure of his influences during those decades.  While Orwell’s personal papers went to University College London and the National Archives, his miscellaneous materials are held by the British Library.  Totalling over 2700 items, a full inventory of Orwell’s collection of pamphlets is now available via the British Library’s website.

Orwell was not a writer of ‘bestselling’ books until the end of his life, after the Second World War.  He became known as a journalist, a critic of other people’s writings and a word-portraitist of the landscape of politics.  It is likely he never passed up the opportunity to acquire pamphlets of any persuasion.  He wryly observed in The Tribune that the pamphleteer’s road was paved by a “complete disregard for fairness or accuracy” (8 December 1944).   Perhaps the most appealing aspect of his pamphlets collection is that he wasn’t Hoovering them up to form a George Orwell Archive; he considered them as a spectrum of thought that was deserving of preserving.    

While Orwell could not acquire and preserve the thoughts of every political entity, those caught in his net were numerous.  He documented the major political parties and the better known minor ones that didn’t figure much electorally, such as The Communist Party of Great Britain, and The Socialist Party.  Orwell was especially strong in acquiring the ephemera of the fringe Left, but any non-mainstream organisation was worthy of attention, for example The Central Board for Conscientious Objectors and The Society of Individualists.  He was keen on foreign publications too, including much from Moscow.  

The author’s interest in non-human animals is revealed including articles from issues of The Smallholder and The Farmer and Stock-Breeder.  His wife Eileen worked for the Ministry of Food and so they retained a range of ‘war cookery’ guides.  And, given his pulmonary problems from tuberculosis, one shouldn’t be surprised that he read Smokeless Air: The Smoke Abatement Journal.

 
1899.SS.35 (15) 

Perhaps the oddest item is a four-page pamphlet from January 1945, The War in Wax, an attempt to get shoppers in London’s Oxford Street to buy tickets to a twisted version of Madame Tussauds.  This promised paying customers an experience of "The horrors of the German Concentration Camp," “Tree-Hangings,” “Stamping to death,” and, on the last page, a children’s section of mechanical moving figures including Cinderella, Laurel & Hardy, Disney characters, Bing Crosby, and even Mae West.   This so-called attraction was too absurd for Orwell not to share, so the concept had a walk-on role as Ingsoc propaganda in 1984.  

Orwell’s heaps of pamphlets informed his writing, both fiction and non fiction. He took pride in his squirrelling-away of pamphlets, “political, religious and what-not”.  In 1949, he estimated that this hoard numbered 1200-2000, but even the higher figure was an underestimation.  He wrote that “a few of them must be great rarities” and they were “bound to be of historical interest in 50 years time.”  In line with most of his considerations, he wasn’t wrong.


Andy Simons
Curator, Printed Historical Sources

Further reading
Inventory of George Orwell’s pamphlet collection

A longer version of George Orwell’s Loft

George Orwell  - help  for researchers