Untold lives blog

In the 1950s Britain was building a nuclear arsenal to bolster the country's position as a great power and deter the Soviet Union. At secretive sites across the UK, boffins toiled away developing nuclear weapon systems; giant rockets were tested in the Australian outback and on the Isle of Wight; in the remote Pacific, British scientists detonated a series of nuclear devices as they unravelled the secrets of the hydrogen bomb; and in a small town near Farnborough, a young rocket scientist named Roy Dommett had a tricky conversation with his wife Marguerite:  

[Roy] came home one day and he said, ‘We’ve got to have a talk.’  And he said, ‘I’m working on something that I think is very important, but I can’t talk to you about it.’  He said, ‘But it might help the world in the future, what do you want me to do?’  
Listen to this extract on Voices of Science

What Roy couldn't talk about was his work on Britain's nuclear deterrent as part of the guided weapons group at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough. The work was so secret his wife knew little of it until he was awarded a CBE in 1991 for a life's work supporting Britain's nuclear deterrent, including the cancelled Blue Streak ballistic missile and the Chevaline upgrade to Polaris.  In his interview for An Oral History of British Science, Roy gives us a fascinating insight into the hidden world of the Cold War rocket scientist, and his unique solution to the stress and secrecy of the work – a lively interest in morris dancing:

My job was sitting in an office with one other person, and I could go day after day without talking to no more than one person at a time.  You know, I needed an activity where I actually met people, got out and did things with people.
Watch Roy Dommett talking about the problems of combining morris dancing with missile science.

Roy Dommett, middle left, with fellow morris dancers in Abingdon, early 1970s

The day job was challenging; developing complex systems to survive the incredible pressures and temperatures of being blasted into space, before hurtling down over the Soviet Union at many times the speed of sound, where they would have to fool Soviet defence systems around Moscow. All to deliver a nuclear payload if the worst happened. While their ultimate purpose may have been terrible nuclear devastation, such systems were intended to deter aggression and make nuclear war less likely, as Roy recalls in this clip it was a paradox not lost on the designers.

 
Roy Dommett at Farnborough Air Services Trust with the Chevaline missile bus, 2012

Roy Dommett is amongst a hundred engineers and scientists to feature on Voices of Science, the British Library's new history of science web resource, based on a thousand hours of interviews collected as part of An Oral History of British Science.

Thomas Lean
Oral History of British Science project interviewer (Made in Britain strand)

Twitter #VoicesOfScience  #histsci

Earlier this year, the British government received a bequest of £500,000 from Miss Joan Edwards.  Another large bequest to the State was made 200 years ago in the will of Admiral Peter Rainier (1741-1808).  Rainier was the senior Royal Navy officer in the East Indies 1794-1805 during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.  He amassed approximately £250,000, primarily through prize money.  In his will he referred to his naval career ‘in which I have acquired the principal part of my fortune I now have, which has exceeded my merit and pretensions’.  He therefore gave 10 per cent of his estate to help reduce the national debt.

Admiral Peter Rainier from Edward Pelham Brenton, The Naval History of Great Britain 

 In spite of his successful career, Rainier did not receive formal recognition of his achievements.  As early as 1799 a correspondent to a London newspaper was puzzled by the lack of honours for Rainier when compared to those showered on Nelson.  Government indifference even continued after he had returned home.  At the general election of 1806 Rainier was not selected to be the Admiralty candidate for Sandwich.  However, he stood as an independent and came top of the poll.

It is difficult to understand why Rainier received no honours.  Perhaps it was felt the vast fortune he made was sufficient reward, or those in power had no idea of how difficult it was to command a naval station of such size and complexity.  Maybe he had no friends or allies to push for him after 11 years away from Britain.  Rainier certainly was not a self-publicist in the style of Nelson – he never complained to the Admiralty about lack of favours, or rewards.
 
Here are some of Rainier’s achievements during the eleven years he was in the East Indies.
 
•    Trade grew rapidly under Royal Navy protection.  Rainier’s successful allocation of the ships of his squadron was helped by his vast knowledge of the uncharted waters of the eastern sea and its severe weather patterns.

•    Rainier’s positioning of his squadron off the Malabar Coast stopped French reinforcements reaching Tipu Sultan of Mysore and ensured British control of Southern India.

•    Rainier cared for his men.  He aimed to provide them with the best food and drink, even buying cocoa although it was twice as expensive as that in the West Indies!  He established a hospital in Madras, and ordered that each captain and surgeon should visit their sick men ashore in hospital at least once a week.  He listened to the crew’s complaints, never punishing too harshly.  He obtained permission to pay lascar sailors locally on their release instead of requiring them to go to London to get paid and then find a return passage to Asia.

•    Rainier was a stickler for efficient logistics and financial administration.  He established excellent support structures over this 30 million square mile station to enable men and ships to get the best possible resources available.

•    Rainier opened up full communication and co-operation between the Navy and the East India Company, leading to success for all combined operations.

Peter Rainier was not a man with a large ego.  His gift to the government points to a man conscious of his good fortune, not one to bear a grudge or feel slighted,  a man of great loyalty to the Crown, the Royal Navy, and his family.
 
Peter Ward
Independent Scholar

Further reading:
Peter A. Ward, British Naval Power in the East, 1794-1805: The Command of Admiral Peter Rainier (2013)

Correspondence and papers for Admiral Peter Rainier are held at the British Library - search our catalogues

On 18 June 1815, Henry Paget, Marquess of Anglesey, was struck in the right leg by a cannonball at the Battle of Waterloo.  Immediate amputation above the knee was required. Paget exclaimed “By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!”, to which Wellington responded “By God, sir, so you have!” before turning back to the field.  The leg was buried with its own tombstone, which still survives, and became a Belgian tourist attraction.

Paget subsequently wore an articulated above-knee prosthetic which came to be named after him.  The “Anglesey Leg” (later known as the “American Leg”) had been invented by James Potts in 1800.  It consisted of a wooden calf and thigh socket, connected by a steel knee joint and finished with a flexible foot connected to the knee with catgut tendons.  Potts’ design was innovative for several reasons – most notably the tendon system which allowed for greater foot flexibility – and was a significant early milestone in aesthetic and practical prosthetic development.

David Copperfield and a man with a wooden leg from The Works of Charles Dickens  Images Online

In Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, freak show manager Mr Vuffin waxes lyrical on the subject of false limbs:

“Look at wooden legs.  If there was only one man with a wooden leg what a property he’d be!... If you was to advertise Shakespeare played entirely by wooden legs, it’s my belief you wouldn’t draw sixpence”

Wooden legs recur regularly throughout Dickens’ works, providing a piratical flourish to his most straight-faced of stories.  They are worn by Simon Tappertit in Barnaby Rudge, Mr Gamp in Martin Chuzzlewit, and Silas Wegg in Our Mutual Friend.  It is a preoccupation which speaks clearly of the regularity with which wooden legs and prosthetics were to be seen in Victorian society.  Adrienne E. Gavin has noted that Dickens, living in Chatham as a youth, would have been surrounded by the sailors and soldiers stationed there towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars and would consequently have seen large numbers of amputees and false limbs.

Most amputees of the time, whether soldiers or civilians, could be assured of some kind of replacement, however rudimentary.  In those pre-anaesthesia times, the process of first having the offending limb sawed off was an intimidating prospect and one with a mortality rate of about 30%.  Wealthy amputees could aspire to advanced prosthetics, known as “cork legs” (made in Cork Street), which offered jointed movement and expensive blends of materials such as ivory, steel, leather and vulcanized rubber.  The less fortunate had to make do with “peg” legs.  “Cork legs” developed a good deal over the course of the nineteenth century, with features such as ivory balls in rubber-socketed ankles for a fuller range of movement, whilst lightweight leather prosthetics were also developed which could be laced on like knee boots.  Advanced legs of this sort were not only superior in the natural movement they supplied but also were less liable than basic wooden legs to rotting and splitting mid-stride.

Some sporadic development of false legs continued into the American Civil War, which produced some 30,000 amputees, and again throughout World War I, but it was not until much later in the twentieth century that combined progress in mechanics, technology and surgical practice both advanced the quality and durability of prosthetic legs and lessened the overall need for them.


Julia Armfield
Former Intern, Printed Historical Resources


Coming soon: False arms…


Further Reading:

Adrienne E. Gavin , Dickens, Wegg and Wooden Legs

Antedecents: Lower Limb Prosthetic Devices

Gordon Philips, Best Foot Forward: Chas A. Blatchford and Sons Ltd, (Artificial Limbs Specialists), 1890-1990, (London: 1990)

Major General Claude Martin was a French adventurer, born in Lyon in 1735. He had the unusual distinction of having served in the French Army, before joining the East India Company’s Army, and eventually commanded the cavalry of the Nawab of Oudh. From humble origins, he had accumulated a vast fortune by the time of his death in 1800, a large portion of which he left in his will for charitable purposes, such as the relief of the poor of Lucknow and Calcutta.

Martin also left funds in his will for the founding of schools in Lucknow, Calcutta and Lyon, known as La Martiniere schools. Martin’s will was complex and inevitably involved much legal wrangling, not being finally settled by the Supreme Court of Calcutta until 1840, some 40 years after his death. The India Office Records holds several files relating to Martin’s will and his charitable bequests.

La Martiniere School in Calcutta (Photo 179 no 13)   Images Online  

The rules and regulations of La Martiniere Schools in Calcutta founded in 1836, one for boys and another for girls, illustrate what educators of the day thought important for children to learn. It states that the education of the children must, as much as possible, focus on the primary design of the schools, “… that of qualifying them for obtaining honest means of livelihood on their leaving it.”

The curriculum sounds rather intimidating: boys were to be taught English, English grammar, writing, geography, history (particularly of Britain and British India), Hindustani, Bengali, mathematics, natural history and mechanical philosophy; while girls were to be taught the same, without mathematics and mechanical philosophy, and additionally needlework, knitting, straw-plaiting, and music.

Teaching was six days a week, with Saturday as half holidays. Regular holidays were 15 days at Easter and 15 days at Christmas. The anniversary of Claude Martin’s death was also deemed a holiday, with a public dinner for the boys and girls, where a toast was to be drunk to the memory of the schools founder, and a medal awarded to the most deserving boy and girl in each division of the school. The parents or guardians of the children were only permitted to visit them on alternate half holidays, and were not permitted on school grounds at any other time without the express permission of the school Secretary.

Portrait c.1856-57 of  L.E. Rees, W. Catania and the child of William Babington Peile, Bengal Army.  Rees and Catania were masters at La Martinière School Lucknow.  Images Online

The children were fed well at the school. Breakfast consisted of bread, butter and tea; and supper was bread and milk. The main meal of the day followed a set weekly menu, of roast or boiled mutton, bread and vegetables Monday and Thursday; mutton curry, rice, bread and fruit Tuesday and Friday; roast beef, potatoes and rice pudding Wednesday and Sunday; and roast fowls, pulau and vegetables on Saturday.

Claude Martin’s generous educational bequests have proved to be farsighted, and La Martiniere schools for boys and girls in Kolkata and La Martiniere College in Lucknow are still going strong today, as is La Martiniere College in Lyon.


John O’Brien
Post 1858 India Office Records

Further Reading:

Rules and Regulations of La Martiniere, founded in Calcutta, under the Will of Major General Claude Martin. With An Extract of the Will of the Testator, The Decree of the Supreme Court with regard to the same, And other Documents. (Calcutta, 1835) [British Library reference: 8365.c.2]

Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, A Very Ingenious Man. Claude Martin in early colonial India (Oxford University Press, 1992) [British Library reference: YC.1993.a.3360]

When we first created this blog, we hoped that it would inspire new research and encourage researchers to tell us about their discoveries in our collections. The Library recently filmed a range of different people who have taken inspiration from the collections, to create a series called Made with the British Library. Here’s one of our favourite stories: the rediscovery of a lost city.

Dr Diana Newall is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Kent. She is an art historian, focusing on 15th century travel and Mediterranean studies. Diana began using the British Library during her PhD, when she was researching the Venetian period on Crete (in the 13th – 17th centuries), and the Cretan school of art created during that time. She became interested in Candia: the former capital of Crete, on the site of modern Heraklion. Candia was destroyed in the early 20th century and there is very little evidence of the old city. Diana used our collections to try to recreate this lost city. Watch the video to find out what she discovered.

  

We’d love to hear about how the Library has inspired you, or about your discoveries in our collections. Write a comment below, or send us an email [email protected].

Melissa Byrd, Higher Education team 

In the British Library’s stall of social history, the curious Cadbury company provides a chocolate box of interests.  The Cadbury family of Birmingham grew their cocoa products empire throughout the 19th century and this led them to building not only a factory but a whole factory town.  In fact, Bournville was a conspicuously composed community that worked wonderfully. 

By the 1930s, the company’s complex of neighbourhoods hired 9,000 workers but the Quaker ethos of the owners gave the staff, and their families, a wide range of social services that would not have been affordable by local government.  You probably know that Cadbury’s provided housing, classroom education, health care, swimming and other sports, and music.  But they ran summer camps for boys, a seaside holiday camp for families, Continental holidays, and the firm even taught adults Esperanto!

From pamphlets about the Bournville Works (BL, 08248.m.9.)

In 1934’s English Journey travelogue, J B Priestley appreciated the paternalist benevolence that the company served up, but he still thought it a politically sour spoonful.  Perhaps the lack of even one public house offended his nature (Bournville’s still pub-less).   But if you want to form your own opinion of Cadbury’s town built of cocoa beans, the British Library offers many morsels of its history. 

The Bournville reading room had “every kind of newspaper and magazine.” While it’s unlikely they stocked the Communist Party’s Daily Worker, the jazz fans’ weekly Melody Maker, or any timely tip-sheet for horse racing aficionados, it was probably a good resource nonetheless.

In 1936 Cadbury’s published a magazine, The Cococub News (P.P.5793.bch) and many pamphlets, including a generously illustrated guide to the factory and the lifestyle of their workers’ community (YD.2013.b.490).  The Library has a collection of similar items, which form a good sampler of their works, 1913-1948 (08248.m.9).  And the Bournville Village Trust today publishes In View (ZK.9.b.29447).

In the wake of interest in the Cadbury legacy are two recent novels from Pan Books : Annie Murray’s The Bells of Bournville Green (LT.2009.x.517) and Chocolate Girls (H.2003/1412).  Modern overviews of the company can be found in Deborah Cadbury’s Chocolate Wars : From Cadbury to Kraft – 200 Years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalry (YC.2010.a.15674), Paul Chrystal’s Cadbury and Fry Through Time (YK.2013.a.9579), and John Bradley’s Cadbury’s Purple Reign : The Story Behind Chocolate’s Best-Loved Brand (YC.2008.b.1108).  But for an acrid taste of the supply chain, there’s Catherine Higgs’ Chocolate Islands : Cocoa, Slavery and Colonial Africa (YC.2013.a.4010).

Andy Simons, Printed Historical Sources, 1914-present 

When the Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India began to gather evidence in 1861, the distinguished scientist and former army surgeon Julius Jeffreys was an important witness. Jeffreys had given much thought to improving the health of the troops. To the commissioners, he expounded his designs for barracks, tents, metallic cloth, thermometers, wells, and headgear.

IOR/L/PARL/2/143 p. 179 

For soldiers in India, the great risk to health was heat. Jeffreys introduced the prototype of his ‘solar hat’. Made of stiffened felt, whalebone, and pleated horsehair cloth, the hat was designed tall to keep the sun’s rays far from the head, and tiered to allow the wearer to move smoothly through high winds. A system of flexible inner bands, cords, and pegs made the hat adjustable. On long marches, Jeffreys advised, the hat might be worn ‘loose’, to be tightened in an instant if an enemy appeared (see left and right illustrations). Ventilation was a special feature. Holes around the top brim allowed currents of air to sweep into the hat, round its inner chambers, and out again through holes in the brim below.

The commissioners received these explanations with interest. One of their number, William Farr, raised doubt only once, when told that the downward pressure on the wearer’s brow was balanced perfectly by the upward pressure to the top of his head. Still, Farr noted, it was a lot of pressure.

The hat seems to have remained in prototype. But a tropical helmet that Jeffreys designed was widely adopted. Neither was Jeffreys’ understanding of air convection ever in doubt.  His serious interest in the subject had already led to the medical invention which made him well known: the respirator.

Antonia Moon
Lead Curator, post-1858 India Office Records

Further reading
Royal Commission on the Sanitary State of the Army in India: Report (London, 1863) (India Office Records reference IOR/L/PARL/2/143)
Julius Jeffreys, The British Army in India: its preservation by an appropriate clothing, housing, locating, recreative employment, and hopeful encouragement of the troops (London, 1858)

In 1865, the physiologist Claude Bernard described the life sciences as “a superb and dazzlingly lighted hall which may be reached only by passing through a long and ghastly kitchen.”  Bernard’s “ghastly kitchen” was a metaphor but 200 years earlier there were plenty of kitchens where work of varying ghastliness took place.

Dissection of living and dead animals was widely practiced throughout the 17th century, mostly in private homes. Looking at books on dissection such as De motu cordis – William  Harvey’s 1628 work on his discovery of the circulation of the blood – alongside  books on cookery gives us a new view of how science was done in this period.

The Butcher’s by Bartolomeo Passarotti ©De Agostini/The British Library Board    Images Online

The aristocratic kitchen was a place well-accustomed to the presence of blood and the dismemberment of animals, and well-equipped with knives. The carnivorous habits of the aristocracy can be viewed in Pierre de La Varenne’s 1651 Cuisinier François (The French Cook, 1653) which commenced with a lengthy list of meats proper to the season, and Robert May’s  Accomplish’d Cook (1660) opened with a list of carving terms for different animals. Contemporaries associated dissection with butchering, and viewed butchers, hangmen, and anatomists as morally equivalent.  The playwright John Gay urged Londoners in 1717

To shun the surly butcher’s greasy tray,
Butchers, whose hands are dy’d with blood’s foul stain,
And always foremost in the hangman’s train.

The boundary between culinary and scientific uses of animals such as lambs, pigs, and calves was slippery. Sixteenth-century naturalists such as Conrad Gessner (the British Library has his 1551 Historia animalium, one of the most important Renaissance works of natural history), included instructions for cooking certain animals.

Anatomists cooked or boiled animal and human parts for a number of reasons. Cooking helped to solidify and fix certain parts such as muscles to make them easier to observe, particularly under the microscope, and boiling was the most common method of cleaning flesh from bones to construct skeletons. 

Before the invention of chemical assays, tasting was an alarmingly common way to test substances.  Like dissection, taste offered sensory access to the hidden processes of the body. In his 1651 work on generation, Harvey described his frequent tasting of chicken eggs over the course of their development, as well as the stomach contents of chicks and other animals, amniotic fluid, the milk of various animals, and blood. Smelling went along with tasting, and at least some of the smells of the dissecting room such as the metallic tang of blood and the sweetish reek of decaying flesh would have been familiar in the kitchen as well.

Dissection of living and dead animals, like cooking, was messy, noisy, and bloody, with dangerous instruments that should only be wielded by skilled operators. The ghastly kitchen was a fundamentally unsettling place, where animals were simultaneously domestic and scientific. In the kitchen, cooks and anatomists used all of their senses to cut, carve, cook, taste, and smell.

Anita Guerrini
Oregon State University, USA

Anita presented this research at the 24th International Congress of History of Science, Technology and Medicine. You can watch some of the papers and read more about the event on the Congress blog.

Read the books cited by Anita at the British Library