Untold lives blog

When the London-based merchant Thomas Pickstock (1792-1864) presented his son George with a travel journal recounting his '91 days ramble’ in France and Belgium between July-October 1843, he expressed the hope that the recipient could find it 'amusing...however unconnected as you’ll find it throughout'.

Add MS 89188. Thomas Pickstock's Journal.

The concern expressed by Pickstock was not completely unjustified. His journal, far from being a neat and systematic account of his adventures abroad, appears like a scrapbook. Nearly every page presents a mixture of manuscript, drawing and printed material. Pickstock did not simply rewrite his travel annotations in a fair copy. Instead, he took great care in illustrating his writing with several watercolours and the keepsakes that he collected during the trip.

Add MS 89188. Thomas Pickstock's Journal. Detail showing a watercolour.

Towards the end of his travels, Pickstock visited the battlefield of Waterloo. This was an experience that struck him ‘with ideas and sentiments…impossible to record, or give a fainting idea of’. Though perhaps difficult to convey with words, Pickstock’s emotional response to this experience can be grasped thanks to the numerous pieces of ephemera relating to the battle inserted into his journal: business cards for tour guides, engravings, maps, and even a note from his uncle, who had visited the battlefield years earlier and had brought home a branch taken off the famous tree under which the Duke of Wellington allegedly held his headquarters. When Pickstock visited the field the tree was not there anymore, as it ‘was removed and transported to England by an individual who purchased the right to do so’.

Add MS 89188. Thomas Pickstock's Journal. Page showing the description of Wellington's tree.

The popularity of Waterloo as a morbidly fascinating tourist attraction resonates in Pickstock’s narration of his visit, which included an encounter with ‘a peasant ploughing and expecting to find bullets’ and an instructive visit to the tour guide’s hut, ‘full of Skulls and other Bones with Sabres for sale – all gathered by his own Children from the fields’.

Add MS 89188. Thomas Pickstock's Journal. Detail showing trade cards.

The narration of Pickstock’s adventures is enriched with a meticulous recording of his expenses during his three-month-long journey and an explanation of the differences between the French and Belgian currencies. This attention to budgetary matters might be explained by the financial misfortunes experienced by the merchant during the summer of 1841, when he very narrowly escaped bankruptcy.

Add MS 89188. Thomas Pickstock's Journal. Detail showing Pickstock's accounts.

Although Pickstock feared that the slightly overwhelming amount of information that he packed in his journal could deter his son from reading it, he also cautiously envisioned that there would be others which ‘might take some pleasure in perusing the same’: an invitation that can now be accepted, as the British Library recently acquired the third volume of Pickstock’s travel journal and it will soon be available to consult under the reference number Add MS 89188.

 
Add MS 89188. Thomas Pickstock's Journal.

By Alessandra Rigotti, MA Early Modern English Literature, King's College, London, & Work Placement Student, Modern Archives and Manuscripts, British Library.

In August 1924, the Sultan of Nejd, Ibn Sa’ud, launched an invasion of the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz, in the west of the Arabian Peninsula.  Meeting little resistance, his Ikhwan forces swiftly captured – and brutally plundered – the city of Ta’if.   After this, the Kingdom’s ruler, Sharif Husain bin Ali al-Hashimi, abdicated in favour of his son, Ali bin Husain al-Hashimi.  The Ikhwan continued to advance and in October captured the holy city of Mecca, leaving the newly incumbent Ali isolated and virtually surrounded in Jeddah.  These rapid territorial losses had left the Kingdom vulnerable militarily and strained economically.

 

Ali bin Husain al-Hashimi (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)

Desperate to gain any advantage that could halt the Ikhwan’s advance, the Kingdom had managed to procure a small number of aircraft.  However, its only pilot was a White Russian refugee named Shirokoff [Shirokov], who was paid a bottle of whisky per day and £60 in gold every month.  Shirokoff is said to have made regular reconnaissance flights, but he refused to fly at less than 9,000 or 10,000 feet and his observer was a “one-eyed officer who always wears dark glasses”.  This prompted Reader William Bullard, Britain’s Agent in Jeddah, to comment sardonically that “it is not believed that the reports brought back are of great value”.

The Kingdom’s aircraft were not armed but Shirokoff was repeatedly pressured to drop hand grenades on Ikhwan positions, even in Mecca, an order he adamantly refused to follow.  He pointed out that if the grenades did not blow the plane up, they would burst before reaching the ground anyway.  Bullard remarked “it is difficult to see what could be gained by the bombing of Mecca by a non-Moslem airman” - doing so would provide Ibn Sa’ud with a propaganda victory.  Shirokoff was said to have supplemented his “inadequate” daily ration of whisky by “heavy purchases and drinking at the expense of his admirers”.  Bullard speculated that “he may one day reach the point of exhilaration at which the prospect of dropping explosives on Mecca will cease to appear objectionable”.  Not long after Bullard expressed this fear, Shirokoff was dead.

 Ibn Sa’ud with his cousin Salman Al-‘Arafa c. 1920 pictured in ‘Heart of Arabia’ (1922) by St. John Philby (Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons)

In January 1925, the pilot was flying above an enemy camp when his plane exploded and all those on board were killed.  That particular day, ‘Umar Shakir, a Syrian anti-Ottoman intellectual and journalist who had fled to the Hejaz, was on board.  Shakir was a friend of Shirokoff’s spotter, and had boarded the plane “without authority”.  Shakir was said to have been “clamouring to be allowed to go and drop bombs” and it appears that he did just that.  Bullard speculated that Shakir had attempted to throw one of the improvised bombs and it had exploded in the plane.

 A bird’s eye view of Mecca and surrounding hillsides, August 1917. Photograph by Samuel M. Zwemer, National Geographic Magazine.

As the Kingdom’s position became increasingly desperate, it resorted to procuring a fatwa [religious ruling] that justified the bombing of Mecca by Christian pilots from a Shaikh said to be named ‘Shengetti’.  Subsequently, a limited number of aerial raids were made on Mecca by newly recruited foreign pilots, but they proved ineffectual and were soon halted.  By December 1925, Jeddah had been formally surrendered to Ibn Sa’ud and Ali fled to the court of his brother King Faisal in Baghdad, where he died a decade later.  The Hejaz region has been under the rule of the Al Saud ever since, and in 1932 became a part of Ibn Sa’ud’s newly established Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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

@Louis_Allday

Further reading:
British Library, IOR/R/15/1/565
British Library, IOR/R/15/5/36
British Library, IOR/R/15/5/37

On 10 November 1929 the Colonial Office received a letter from Philip Perceval Graves of The Times asking whether the Government held any information on a Danish author and traveller named Knud Holmboe.  Holmboe had written to The Times the previous day, briefly describing his plans for a trip across the Arabian Peninsula. He hoped to visit Palestine, Mecca, Medina and Oman, before reaching Aden.  Holmboe requested an appointment with the newspaper’s foreign news editor.  Graves told the Colonial Office that since he assumed that British permits would be required for parts of Holmboe’s proposed trip, it might be interested to know of the Dane’s intentions. 

Graves also wrote:

'[h]ow he means to reach Mecca and Medina is his affair and perhaps "it is his funeral" is all that need be said of that part of his scheme. The rest might be possible'.

Graves’s words would prove to be sadly prescient, although perhaps not quite in the way that he might have imagined.

Knud Holmboe from Desert Encounter (London, 1936)

A fluent speaker of Arabic, Holmboe, who was born in 1902 into a Danish middle class family, had converted to Islam a few years previously.  He had already travelled extensively in the Middle East. The initial part of his proposed journey took him by car from Morocco to Libya, where he witnessed the shocking treatment that was inflicted upon the Libyan Muslim population by its Italian colonial rulers: thousands of Bedouins were imprisoned in concentration camps and summary executions occurred on a daily basis.  According to Holmboe, during his time in Cyrenaica there were thirty executions a day.

Holmboe was deported from Libya to Egypt, where he was imprisoned before being sent back to Denmark.  He recorded his observations in a book Ørkenen Brænder (English title: Desert Encounter), which was first published in 1931. In the book, Holmboe writes:

'[i]t became more and more clear to me that the Italians understood nothing of the soul of this people, of whom they had appointed themselves rulers'.

Predictably, the book was banned in Fascist Italy (it would not be translated into Italian until 2004) but sold well elsewhere in Europe. However, Holmboe did not live to enjoy his book’s success. Having returned to the Middle East in late 1931, intent on completing his pilgrimage to Mecca, he was killed in Aqaba, in modern-day Jordan, allegedly by members of a local Bedouin tribe in the employ of Italian officers, although this claim has never been verified.

David Fitzpatrick
Content Specialist, Archivist, British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership 

Further reading:
IOR/L/PS/12/2071, ff 401-402
Knud Holmboe, Desert Encounter (London, 1936)

‘We regret that no-one in Bahrain is interested in “pre-packed airports.”’ So ran the briefest and most succinct of letters from the Political Agent in Bahrain to the Board of Trade in London, in December 1949. What were “pre-packed airports”, and why was no-one in Bahrain interested in them?

Extract of a letter from the Political Agency in Bahrain to the Commercial Relations and Exports Department of the Board of Trade, London, 1 December 1949. IOR/R/15/2/508, f 193 

The Political Agent’s note was in response to a letter, sent by the Board of Trade in London in September 1949, reporting on a combined Dutch-US company that was comprised ‘of specialists in each constituent field of airport construction’, and who were offering the ‘pre-packed airport’, which could be built in any place as required.

This approach was in stark contrast to the way in which the British-administered airports in the Persian Gulf, at Bahrain and at Sharjah (in the United Arab Emirates), had developed. These sites, established by the British in the 1920s and 1930s, had grown up in an ad-hoc and oftentimes haphazard manner, in response to wartime as much as peacetime needs. Moreover, in the wake of India’s independence in 1947, and as the Royal Air Force scaled back its operations in the Gulf, a host of commercial aviation concerns – both British and foreign – were demanding access to improved airport facilities across the region.

British officials in the Gulf were unprepared and uncertain about how to respond to these changes. One Government official in Bahrain noted in 1949 that ‘we have no clear picture of the respective functions of the R.A.F., I.A.L. [International Aeradio Limited] and B.O.A.C. [British Overseas Airways Corporation] at Muharraq [in Bahrain].’ In official correspondence of the same year the Political Resident Rupert Hay conceded that ‘far more foreign aircraft are using the airfields without permission than with it’.

Extract of a letter from the Political Resident, William Rupert Hay, to the Foreign Office, 9 July 1949. IOR/R/15/2/508, ff 164-168

There was a gross underestimation on the part of British officials over the future potential of air travel, as well as a clear lack of understanding of the Gulf’s future potential as an international hub for air travel, and of the safety implications this raised. In October 1949 the newly installed Political Officer in Doha concluded that the future prospects for an expansion of ‘air traffic [in Qatar] is unlikely’, and that he did not think ‘there would ever be a demand in Qatar for a complete “pre-packed airport” installation.’

Extract of a letter from the Political Officer in Doha to the Political Agent in Bahrain, 29 October 1940. IOR/R/15/2/508, f 190

Meanwhile, British Government officials were meeting at the Ministry of Civil Aviation in London, to discuss airfield crash facilities at Bahrain. The facilities at Muharraq, the meeting’s minutes noted, are ‘quite hopeless for any aircraft emergency.’ Proposals made during the meeting included the installation of ‘two standard RAF foam tenders, plus two water bowsers’.

 
Extract of advance notes from a meeting held on 19 October 1949, on Bahrain (Muharraq) Airfield Crash Facilities. IOR/R/15/2/508, ff 185-189

Such equipment could deal with, but not prevent accidents occurring, and, less than a year later, in June 1950, a double tragedy occurred when two Douglas DC-4’s, both operated by Air France, crashed on the approach to Bahrain within two days of each other. A total of eighty-six people died in the two incidents. While investigators attributed the cause of the accidents to bad weather, the tragedies were a wake-up call to British officials, who acted quickly to equip the airfield at Muharraq with radio landing aids and runway approach lights.

Mark Hobbs
Subject Specialist, Gulf History Project

British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Further Reading:
British Library ‘File 13/2 VIII Air facilities in Arab shaikhdoms’ IOR/R/15/2/508 

On the eve of the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme, Laura Walker, our Lead Curator of Manuscripts 1851-1950, looks at diary accounts of the Battle. Tomorrow, on the day itself, Michael Day, our Digitisation Preservation Manager, considers the death of a British Museum clerk and soldier at the Somme.

The Somme is one of the most well-known battles of the First World War fought on the Western Front. It is chiefly remembered due to the scale of the casualties with over one million dead, wounded or missing by the end of the offensive. The British Library holds eye witness accounts of the fighting at the Somme from Major General Hunter Weston and Captain Roland Gerard Garvin.

Private War Diary of Major General Hunter Weston, Add MS 48365 f.53v

Major General Hunter Weston was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1884 and saw active service on the North West Frontier, present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, in Egypt and in the Boer War before he was given a command on the Western Front in 1914. Hunter Weston kept two diaries of his experiences of the First World War one official and one private. These diaries provide us with a fascinating insight into the fighting in 1914 on the Western Front, in Gallipoli in 1915 and at the battle of the Somme in 1916.

 Private War Diary of Major General Hunter Weston, Add MS 48365 f.54

In his private diary for 1916 Hunter Weston has included photographs showing the advance of the troops under his command, the 8th Corps to their assault on the fortified hamlets of Beaumont-Hamel, Beaumont-sur-Ancre, and Serre on the first day of the battle on 1st July 1916. Despite their efforts the 8th Corp’s objective was not achieved and they suffered 14,581 casualties on that day alone.

 Private War Diary of Major General Hunter Weston, Add MS 48365 f.55v

Captain Roland Gerard Garvin was the son of journalist and newspaper editor James Luis Garvin. The First World War broke out the week after his last day at Westminster School. Despite winning a history scholarship for Christ Church, Oxford, Garvin enlisted in the 7th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment.

Photograph of Captain Roland Gerard Garvin, Add MS 88882/10/2

Garvin attended a staff training course in Chelsea in December 1914 and this continued in Camberley in April 1915 before he was sent over to France on 17th July 1915. The Library holds his notes from both of these courses and diary extracts from when he was serving on the Western Front. The diary extracts below record his account of the first day of the Somme.

Field Message Book of Captain Roland Gerard Garvin, Add MS 88882/9/31

Field Message Book of Captain Roland Gerard Garvin, Add MS 88882/9/31

On 20th July Garvin wrote a letter to his family saying good bye as he knew he was going into action in a day or two. Three days later between 12pm and 1pm Garvin was killed by machine gun fire. His body was never found.

Letter from Captain Roland Gerard Garvin to his family, July 20th 1916, Add MS 88882/3/9

Letter from Captain Roland Gerard Garvin to his family, July 20th 1916, Add MS 88882/3/9

The complete diaries of Hunter Weston and the papers of Garvin can be found online at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/.

Laura Walker, Lead Curator, Manuscripts and Archives 1851-1950.

Chronograms are sentences, phrases or poems created so that the letters, which are also roman numerals add up to a certain date. In order to achieve this, the letters that are also roman numerals are attributed with a numerical value. So for example I is 1, V is 5 and X is 10. They can found in historical tracts, on buildings and grave stones.

James Hilton (1816-1907) was an avid collector of chronograms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He found and copied out examples from many different manuscripts but he also received new chronograms from chronogram enthusiasts.

Reverend Cecil Deedes (1843-1920) was a key contributor of chronograms to Hilton’s collections. His chronograms were based on local events and national news stories including the death of Gladstone, the situation in South Africa and escaped tigers.

One chronogram from 1898 reveals Deedes’ empathy for the dogs of Sussex who due to the persistence of rabies were ordered by magisterial powers to be muzzled. Any dogs found not wearing a muzzle were disposed of by the police. Deedes’ chronogram is as follows:

Detail from a chronogram in James Hilton's Papers, British Library, Modern Manuscripts Collection.

Luckily for the dogs the order was revoked later on in 1898 by which time Hilton notes that many dogs had grown very fat due to a lack of exercise. Deedes celebrated with his canine friends with the chronogram below:

Detail from a chronogram in James Hilton's Papers, British Library, Modern Manuscripts Collection.

A couple of years later in February 1900 Deedes was concerned with the fate of Archie the elephant. Archie was an elephant in Sangar’s exhibition at Crystal Palace, Sydenham. Irritated by his keeper prodding him with a spear, Archie crushed him under his foot and broke loose. Hilton reports that he caused ‘much mischief and alarm in the neighbourhood’. Deedes’ chronogram reports what happened next:

Detail from a chronogram in James Hilton's Papers, British Library, Modern Manuscripts Collection.

Deedes enjoyed writing many of his chronograms in Latin but luckily Hilton includes a transcription for those like me who have trouble translating it. The translation is as follows:

‘From Sagars beast enclosure
Within the Crystal Palace
An elephant just bolted
Who bore the name of Archie
He levelled walls and fences
And ruined people’s gardens
In a big wood was concealment
Till here the herd revealed him
Now that his jaunt was over
To work returns the rover’

In order to draw Archie out, a number of other elephants were herded around the wood. On seeing the other elephants Archie emerged from his hiding place. Hilton and Deedes don’t record what happened to Archie but Hilton notes that at the coroner’s inquest ‘magisterial interference caused punishment to fall on certain of Sangar’s people’.

The British Library holds a number of volumes of Hilton’s published and unpublished works on chronograms, which include both historical and current affairs chronograms. Many can be found at Add MS 68939-68941. There are four more volumes from this collection currently being catalogued which will shortly be available.

Laura Walker, Lead Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts 1851-1950.

These are the words which Colonel Charles Sibthorpe (1783-1855) used to describe the Great Exhibition and Crystal Palace. His staunch opposition to any foreign influence, including a deep suspicion of Prince Albert, was the likely cause of his dislike of the Exhibition, which housed 13,000  exhibits from around the world.

Lithograph published by Day & Son, 1854, showing the Crystal Palace and Park in Sydenham. Add MS 50150.

The British Library Modern Manuscripts Department owns two volumes of letters, ephemera and artwork relating to the Great Exhibition, the Crystal Palace and its life in Hyde Park and later in Sydenham, South London. The collection contains posters, letters, tickets, photographs, drawings, newspaper cuttings and advertisements.

One of my favourite items is a letter dated August 27 1862 from Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (1807-1894) to Edward Trimmer (1827-1904), secretary to the Royal College of Surgeons.

Hawkins was the designer and sculptor of the models of extinct animals and dinosaurs which were commissioned to stand in the grounds of the Crystal Palace after its move to Sydenham. To celebrate the launch of the models, Hawkins hosted a dinner on 31 December, 1853, inside one of the dinosaur models.

Baxter-type showing the dinosaurs at Crystal Palace, 1854. Add MS 50150.

Trimmer had evidently asked Hawkins which dinosaur was the location of the supper party and Hawkins responded:

"In reply to your enquiry as to which of my models of the gigantic extinct animals in the Crystal Palace Park at Sydenham I had  converted into a sale á manger. I send you herewith a graphic answer in a miniature sketch of the Iguanodon as he appeared with his brains in and his belly full on the 31 of Decr 1853 and if you are further interested in the details of my whimsical feast you will find a good report in the London Illustrated News of July 7 1854 as its proprietor The late Mr Ingram was among the press of guests on that occasion; I had the pleasure of seeing around me many of the heads of science among whom in the head of the squadron was Professor Owen and the late Professor Ed forbes with eighteen other friends we were all very jolly to meet the new year 1854."

Hawkins' sketch of the Iguanodon shows a lively scene of people standing and raising glasses inside the body of the dinosaur.

Detail of the dinner party held inside the Iguanodon, from Hawkins' letter to Trimmer, Add MS 50150.

The drawing is similar in composition to the wood engraving from the Illustrated London News which was taken from an original drawing by Hawkins, and shows the dinosaur surrounded by a wooden platform and steps.

 Wood engraving from the Illustrated London News, January 7 1854, showing 'Dinner in the Iguanodon Model, at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham'. Add MS 50150, f. 225.

The dinosaurs remain in the Crystal Park today and are Grade I listed. There's a brilliant Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs group who promote the long-term conservation of the models. A recent blog on the FCPD site shows images of the interior of the Iguanodon, the dinosaur in which Hawkins hosted his banquet.

Alexandra Ault, Curator, Manuscripts 1601-1850.

Aviation is widely regarded as a major scientific and technological breakthrough but another low-tech invention associated with flying is the parachute.  Made of light, strong materials with a large surface area, the parachute slows the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag or aerodynamic lift. Conceptual images depicting parachutes can be found within an anonymous Italian manuscript from the 1740s, showing a free-hanging man clutching a wooden frame attached to a small canopy. The more famous depiction by Leonardo da Vinci was made a decade later. Similar sketches appear in numerous printed works throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however the first actual descent was not attempted until 1783 by Louis-Sebastien Lenormand in France. Together the Scott and Fitzgerald collections within the philatelic collections chart major milestones in British and Global aviation including early references to parachuting.

Oldest known depiction of a parachute, Add MS 34113, f. 200v, British Library

The first two successful parachute descents made in Britain were conducted by John Hampton; his first attempt being made at Montpelier Gardens in Cheltenham on the evening of 3 October 1838. According to an account published on page four of the Spectator dated 6 October 1838 he made an uneventful descent from 9,000 feet landing safely after thirteen minutes.  The H. Eric Scott collection contains a page from the Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction No. 953, which illustrates Hampton’s second descent by parachute at Crenmorne House, Chelsea the following year on 13 June 1839. These images depict the several phases of his attempt, beginning with his ascent in a basket attached to a closed umbrella like parachute secured by a cord to the hot air balloon. At a certain altitude the umbrella like parachute was opened and detached from the balloon by cutting the cord, allowing the parachute to descend slowly back to earth and touching down safely on the ground, a feat which looks far from comfortable.

Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction No. 953, H. Eric Scott Collection, British Library

Sybil Fitzgerald’s global collection pioneer airmail contains material for India including an interesting sheet printed in November 1837 entitled Monsr. D. Robertson’s Grand and Last Ascension at Calcutta. It contains details for a projected balloon voyage to Europe which sounds bizarre involving the use of balloons shaped like elephants and fish bearing the arms of the East India Company and Queen Victoria which would rise to a height of 12,000 feet (2000 fathoms). Prior to its departure on the winds to Europe, Robertson suggested that a small monkey would descend by parachute. Since nothing else can be found regarding this outlandish proposal it is hoped the monkey had a lucky escape!

Monsr. D. Robertson’s Grand and Last Ascension at Calcutta, November 1837. Sybil Fitzgerald Collection, British Library

The Scott and Fitzgerald collections can be viewed by appointment in the philatelic collections by emailing: [email protected]

Richard Scott Morel
Curator, Philatelic Collections

Sources:
'White, Lynn: Lynn White: The invention of the Parachute', in Technology and Culture, vol. 9, No. 3 (July 1968), pp. 462-467
The British Library, Add MS 34113, f. 200v
The H. Eric Scott Collection, volume 1
The Fitzgerald Collection, India