What did one have to do to succeed in Victorian London?  On the evidence of the life of bookbinder Charles Tuckett junior, versatility, luck, talent, intellect and an engaging personality were not enough.  Despite publications and patents to his name and esteem from both his British Museum Library colleagues and his trade society (the Bookbinders’ Pension Society), Charles died in 1875 at the age of 54 after a long illness, bankrupt, with his teenaged son Frederick as chief mourner.  However the Hampstead and Highgate Express emphasised that ‘affectionate respect was sincerely and mournfully given’.  Many important figures attended the funeral.

A bookbinding workshop in Victorian London from A Description of Westleys & Clark's Bookbinding Establishment, 1845

The Tuckett family comprised father Charles, sons Charles, Robert Daniel and John.   The surname was synonymous with bookbinding; notably at the British Museum, and at their own business nearby in Bloomsbury.  They were also official binders to the Queen and Prince Albert.  Charles Tuckett senior managed the Museum workshop for 40 years and Charles junior worked there too.

Plate 3 of Specimens of Ancient and Modern Bookbinding showing the cover of Il Petrarcha (Venice, 1521). 

Photograph from the British Library’s database of bookbindings on the same book, Il Petrarcha (Venice, 1521)

Charles junior was devoted to raising the profile of books and bookbinding.  In 1846, he published a book titled Specimens of Ancient and Modern Bookbinding Selected chiefly from the Library of the British Museum.  He subsequently organised displays at locations which would attract the interest of influential members of society, for example the Society of Arts.  Tuckett’s book reviewers encouraged him to extend his study of bindings by issuing more volumes, including a wider range of styles, but it was not to be.

Review of Tuckett’s Specimens of Ancient and Modern Bookbindings from The Bookseller 26 April 1861, p. 213.

Charles junior’s interests were wide ranging, though books were central to his concerns.  He was keen on practical experimentation.  His 1860 patent recorded ‘an improved method of ornamenting book covers, which is also applicable to other purposes’ received much publicity in the newspapers.  It incorporated a new way of adding or changing colour on the surface of leather.

Detailed account from Tuckett’s new dye process patent, No. 2408 of 5 October 1860.

The year 1865 proved to be a turning point in the fortunes of the Tucketts.  There was a serious workshop fire in the Museum.  Tuckett senior was held responsible and dismissed.  The capable Tuckett junior assumed his father’s post of Museum Binder.  He oversaw a team of experienced binders including Stephen Would and Joseph Darby.

The Trustees and the august and knowledgeable Keepers of printed books and manuscripts relied upon Tuckett to preserve their fragile collections, maintain the workforce and balance the budget.  Additional stress and calls upon his time were caused by the family business as well as his other occupations.  The 1871 census, lists Tuckett as the supervisor of 55 men, three boys, and fifteen women.  His family home was at 7 Maitland Park Villas, Haverstock Hill, an up and coming area.  A household of his second wife, seven children under the age of thirteen and five servants must have been extremely expensive to maintain.

Perhaps Tuckett over-extended himself: the London Gazette recorded his bankruptcy under an act of 1869.  After years of ill health, which may have impacted severely on his work output, Tuckett died in October 1875.  He predeceased his father, who died five months later in March 1876.

P.J.M. Marks
Printed Historical Collections.

Further reading
Tuckett (C. , Junior ) Specimens of Ancient and Modern Bookbinding. Selected chiefly from the Library of the British Museum . (London , 1846)
The American Bookmaker (August 1894).

 

In 1775, the East India Company commissioned a huge memorial in Westminster Abbey dedicated to Major General Stringer Lawrence (1698-1775).  It was completed in 1777 at a cost of £750, making it the most expensive artwork the Company had ever commissioned.  Unlike other soldiers who were memorialised in Westminster Abbey for dying in the line of duty, Lawrence died at home, almost 20 years after he retired.  What made him so important to the East India Company?

Memorial to Stringer Lawrence in Westminster Abbey by William Tyler.  Commissioned by the East India Company in 1775, completed in 1777.  Image copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

In 1746, the Company appointed Stringer Lawrence to establish a private army in India.  This militarisation accelerated the Company’s transformation from a mercantile business to an imperial power.  Lawrence’s most famous protégé was Robert Clive.  In the 1750s, they fought side by side, in a series of proxy battles against the French known today as the Carnatic Wars.  Lawrence and Clive commanded troops out of the inland fortress-town of Tiruchirappalli, an important base during these battles.  By 1756, Clive succeeded Lawrence as the Company’s Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies.

In 1760, to celebrate its military successes, the East India Company commissioned marble statues of Lawrence and Clive dressed as Roman soldiers.  These were placed in the General Court Room of East India House, the Company’s headquarters in London.  Lawrence may have founded the Company’s army, but Robert Clive, the younger of the two men, was by then considered more important, and was certainly more famous.  Clive’s fame worked against him in the early 1770s, when he was exposed as financially and morally corrupt, and on 22 November 1774, at the age of 49, he died after cutting his throat.

Sculptures of Robert Clive and Stringer Lawrence in Roman military costume by Peter Scheemakers. Commissioned by the East India Company in 1760, completed in 1764. Clive’s raised left hand indicates authority. British Library, Foster 53 and 54. Both statues are now in Britain’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.

The East India Company went silent on all matters pertaining to Clive.  How could it divert attention away from his inauspicious end?  The answer came along seven weeks later, on 10 January 1775, when Stringer Lawrence died at the venerable age of 77.  The Company fixated on memorialising the respectable 'father' of its army by commissioning the enormous and costly monument in Westminster Abbey.  At its centre, two female figures, one an angel and the other a personification of the East India Company, flank a sculpted landscape of Tiruchirappalli, the fortified town where Clive and Lawrence commanded troops during the Carnatic Wars.

Detail at the centre of Stringer Lawrence’s memorial, Westminster Abbey. Image copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster.

In the 18th century, before the formation of museums and art galleries, Westminster Abbey was one of London’s most popular public attractions.  Stringer Lawrence’s conspicuous memorial was placed in an extremely prominent location, next to the Abbey’s main, west facing entrance.  To secure this location, the Company paid for a pre-existing monument to be moved to another part of the Abbey.  By memorialising Lawrence this way, the East India Company drew attention away from Robert Clive’s scandalous death.

CC-BY Jennifer Howes
Art Historian specialising in South Asia
 
Creative Commons Attribution licence

Further reading:
Howes, Jennifer. The Art of a Corporation: The East India Company as Patron and Collector. New Delhi: Routledge, April 2023. Pages 85 and 114-116.
Payments to William Tyler for the construction of Stringer Lawrence’s memorial British Library, IOR/B/92, pages 326 and 688.
Charges to the East India Company for relocating a pre-existing monument. Westminster Abbey Library, Chapter Act Book, CH/02/01/011.

 

In any military expedition, the logistics of supply and transport are crucial to the success of the endeavour.  One report in the India Office Records gives a flavour of this as it relates to transport of the sick and wounded.  The report is in a thick volume of papers relating to the Abyssinia Expedition of 1868. 

 

‘Report on Camp Equipage and Sick Carriage’,  1 June 1868 - IOR/L/MIL/5/542

 

The ‘Report on Camp Equipage and Sick Carriage’, dated 1 June 1868, was written by Captain Holland, Assistant Quarter Master, General Army Headquarters, Abyssinia Field Force.  It lists the numbers of the various different types of sick carriage despatched for the Expedition as follows: 401 doolies, 40 ambulances, 241 kujawahs, 175 camel saddles, 144 mule pads and 128 stretchers.  There were also 39 European hospital tents and 50 hospital marquees.  Plus, an additional 8 swing cots, 128 dandies and 2129 McGuire’s hammocks for the conveyance of the sick and wounded.  Interestingly, the report gives brief descriptions of all these types of carriage, and some even have little sketches showing what they looked like.

 

Sketch of a doolie IOR/L/MIL/5/542
 

Doolies: very much used in India, they weighed 123lbs, were made of teak with cane bottoms and short legs suspended from a bamboo pole by a light iron framework, and covered by waterproof canvas.  Usually carried in India by six bearers, their weight and bulk made them unfit for service in hilly country without roads. 

 

Ambulances: drawn by bullocks, they were heavy and were only fit for use on roads. 

 

Sketch of a dandie IOR/L/MIL/5/542

 

Dandies: consisted of a light wooden framework with a cane bottom with two pieces of iron at either end supporting the bamboo pole. Weighing 54lbs, they had nearly all the advantages of a doolie, their portability making them more suitable over bad roads in hilly country. Fastening a blanket across the pole made a temporary cover.

 

Sketches of a swing cot and a hammock IOR/L/MIL/5/542

 

Swing cots: a framework of light wood covered with canvas, the whole being supported by a bamboo pole, they weighed 45lbs, and only required four bearers. Well adapted for carrying men suffering from slight ailments or injuries, but not suitable as sleeping cots, and uncomfortable for patients when placed on the ground, especially in wet weather. 

 

Hammocks: very useful for carrying men who fell out of the line of march from fatigue or temporary ailments, but not adapted for wounded men or for patients suffering from serious illnesses.  Same disadvantage as swing cots in not being placed on the ground in wet weather. 

 

Kujawahs (camel chair): used for the conveyance of two sick men on each camel.  A good means of conveyance for sick men in a camel country.  However, gave no protection from the sun or rain.  Similarly, camel saddles afforded conveyance for two men sitting astride on each camel.  Fitted with good backs, and in camel country they were a very suitable means of conveyance for men suffering from fatigue or slight ailments, and who were able to sit up. 

 

Mule pads: weighing 35lbs, generally used for the conveyance of men who had fallen out of the line of march. 

 

The report also gave details of the different types of camp tents used by the Expedition Force:

155 European soldier double poled tents.

312 European soldier single poled tents

863 Native soldier double poled tents

329 Native soldier single poled tents

323 English circular double fly tents

676 English circular single fly tents. 

 

John O’Brien 

India Office Records

 

Further Reading:  

Abyssinia Expeditionary Force 1867-1868: Letters and enclosures from Lord Napier, December 1867-November 1868, shelfmark IOR/L/MIL/5/542. 

National Army Museum guide to the Abyssinia Expedition

 

The Institution for Promoting the Natural History of India was established by Governor-General Richard Wellesley at Barrackpore outside Calcutta in 1801.  The aim was to increase Western scientific knowledge of the fauna of India, which Wellesley viewed as being ‘altogether unknown to the naturalists of Europe, or [which] have been imperfectly and inaccurately described’.  The Institution was supervised initially by Dr Francis Buchanan (later Buchanan Hamilton), an East India Company surgeon and accomplished naturalist, and then by William Lloyd Gibbons, an assistant at the Calcutta Orphan School and member of the Bengal Asiatic Society.  Animals and birds were collected and sent to Barrackpore for scientific study, the process of which included making descriptive notes and commissioning drawings, often from Indian artists.  The Institution itself was short-lived, receiving little advocacy or financial support from the East India Company.  Barrackpore Menagerie survived as a public attraction until 1878, when the animals and birds were transferred to Alipore, to what later became Calcutta Zoo.

Moore & Horsfield catalogue entry for Falco tinninculus

Copies of many of the notes and drawings produced at Barrackpore are held at the British Library.  Some were deposited directly with the East India Company by Buchanan Hamilton, others sent to London by Gibbons, and still others ended up at East India House via intermediaries such as Nathanial Wallich and Dr John Fleming.  Drawings, notes, and physical specimens were housed as part of the India Museum, and many were worked on by Thomas Horsfield and Frederick Moore for their Catalogue of the birds in the Museum of the Honourable East India Company (London, 1854-58).

Mss Eur Mack Misc 167. 6. Notes on ‘Falco tinnunculus’ (Common Kestrel)

Mss Eur Mack Misc 167. 91. Notes on ‘Ardea purpurea' (Purple Heron)

Two volumes of scientific notes made at Barrackpore Menagerie are in India Office Records and Private Papers, the first of which (Mss Eur D541) deals exclusively with birds.  The notes were unbound, (or possibly dis-bound), which made it easier to consult the scientific writings alongside the drawings for identification purposes.  Unfortunately, this did historically make it easier for items to stray, so when the notes were eventually bound, nine of the descriptions – nos. 1-7 and 90-92 – were lacking.  Thankfully, the descriptions were numbered and with some research we have recently identified a small collection of bird descriptions relating to five birds of prey and two herons in the Colin Mackenzie Miscellaneous collection as being seven of the Buchanan Hamilton/Gibbons descriptions.

NHD2/191 Common Kestrel. ‘Falco tinnunculus’. Watercolour by Mahangu Lal, 1805-07.

Our Visual Arts Department holds the drawings, and they are exquisitely detailed.  They were drawn and painted by Indian artists such as Guru Dayal, Haludar, Mahangu Lal and Bishnu Prasad.  East India Company librarians and curators in the 19th century gave each of the natural history drawings in their care a running number in red ink.  The drawings that relate to birds of Barrackpore, as described in Mss Eur D541, are NHD2/186-284, otherwise known as the G & B (Gibbons & Buchanan) Collection.  Additional bird, mammal, and reptile drawings by Buchanan Hamilton are found in NHD3/311-536, the Buchanan Collection, and these relate to descriptions held in the second volume of notes from the Barrackpore Menagerie (Mss Eur D94).

NHD2/276 Purple Heron. ‘Ardea purpurea’. Watercolour by Guru Dayal, 1805-07.

The British Library’s newly opened exhibition Animals: Art, Science and Sound includes an important volume of watercolours of Gangetic fish, commissioned by Buchanan Hamilton and made by the artist Haludar.  These were published in An Account of the Fishes found in the river Ganges and its branches, etc. (Edinburgh, 1822), which remains a seminal work on Indian fish species.

Lesley Shapland
Cataloguer, India Office Records

Further reading:
India Office Records and Private Papers - Dr Francis Buchanan Hamilton papers, including Journals of his Deputation from Bengal to Ava [Burma], 1795-1798; Observations on Nepal, 1802; Natural history observations and drawings made at the Barrackpore Menagerie; Notes, descriptions and natural history illustrations in preparation for Fishes of the Ganges; Catalogue of Dried Plants presented to the East India Company Museum; Reports, statistics, drawings and vocabularies produced during the Survey of Bengal (1807-1814). These have various references, including Mss Eur C12-14; Mss Eur D70-98; Mss Eur E68-73; Mss Eur G10-25.
Mss Eur D541: Description of Birds and Animals in the Barrackpore Menagerie, Volume I
Mss Eur D94: Description of Birds and Animals in the Barrackpore Menagerie, Volume II
Mss Eur D487: Description by Dr F Hamilton (formerly Buchanan) of Birds, Quadrupeds and Tortoises
Mss Eur D562/21: Lists of Drawings Birds & Quadrupeds, 1817-1820
NHD2/186-284: The 'G & B' (Gibbons & Buchanan) Collection. Ninety-nine drawings in laid down in an album of birds from India and the East Indies, in a collection formed under the supervision of Francis Buchanan (afterwards Buchanan-Hamilton) and William Lloyd-Gibbons
NHD3/311-536: Two hundred and twenty-six drawings in watercolour and pencil depicting 169 birds (151 separate drawings and 18 duplicates), 38 mammals and 19 reptilia from India and the East Indies
Thomas Horsfield and Frederic Moore, A catalogue of the birds in the Museum of the Hon. East-India Company (London, 1854-58)
Mildred Archer, Natural History Drawings in the India Office Library (London, 1962)
Sally Walker ‘Zoological Gardens of India’, Chapter 8 in Zoo and aquarium history: ancient animal collections to zoological gardens by Vernon N Kisling, Jr. (ed) (Boca Raton, Florida : CRC Press, 2001)
Salim Ali ‘Bird Study in India: Its History and its Important’, India International Centre Quarterly, Vol 6., No. 2 (April 1927), pp.127-139

 

A recently catalogued collection of India Office Private Papers is now available to researchers in the British Library’s Asian & African Studies reading room.  This consists of papers relating to Sir William Hay Macnaghten, Bengal Civil Service 1814-1841; and Sir Francis Workman Macnaghten, Judge of the Supreme Court of Madras 1809-1815 and Senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William 1815-1825.

'Surrender of Dost Mahommed Khan to Sir William Hay Macnaghten Bart at the entrance into Caubul from Killa-Kazee' from James Atkinson, Sketches in Afghaunistan British Library X812 Images Online

In 1838, Sir William Hay Macnaghten was appointed Envoy and Minister at the Afghan Court of Shah Shuja.  The mission to Afghanistan ended in disaster and the collection contains many papers relating to the death of Sir William at Kabul on 23 December 1841 during the first Anglo-Afghan war.  Included is Lady Frances Macnaghten's claim for compensation and a copy of a letter from Captain Lawrence giving an account of the death of Macnaghten and the retreat from Kabul.

Note written by Eldred Pottinger Mss Eur F760/1

There is also a copy of a note written by Eldred Pottinger, the political officer who succeeded to the position of Envoy on Macnaghten’s death. In the note, he described the desperate situation of the Kabul garrison: ‘Macnaghten was called out to a Conference and murdered….we are to fall back on Jalalabad tomorrow or the next day – in the present disturbed state of the country we may expect opposition on the road – and we are likely to suffer much from the cold and hunger as we expect to have no carriage for tents or superfluities.’  He reported that he had taken charge of the mission and that ‘The cantonment is now attacked’.

Sir William’s father was Sir Francis Workman Macnaghten, appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court of Madras in 1809. The collection contains a journal written by Sir Francis from this period in his life.  He began writing the journal while on board the ship Bucephalus, which left Portsmouth on 15 November 1809 and arrived at Madras on 25 April 1810. He explained, ‘These notes and memoranda were written on ship board as the matter of them occurred to my memory. They were mainly intended to express for my own use the facts and my feelings upon them. Should they fall into other hands they will I trust be treated accordingly’.

Macnaghten's sketch of a water spout Mss Eur F760/2

The journal includes an account of the circumstances of Macnaghten's appointment to the post of Judge at the Supreme Court of Madras, preparations for leaving England, and the voyage to Madras. The journal ends with his being sworn in as a judge on the bench at Fort St George and paying a formal visit to the Nabob of the Carnatic. He includes such information as the fees of a knighthood and some facts on the Bucephalus. Macnaghten also drew a sketch of a water spout which the ship encountered along the way. He described that on 16 December 1809: ‘Saw a water spout. The store ship which we had under convoy fired a gun at it and we saw it regularly dispersing – It emptied itself regularly from its bottom or lower part and we perceived the sea where it fell very much affected by it. It had the appearance of smoke rising from a distant fire’.

John O’Brien
India Office Records

Further Reading:
Papers relating to Sir Francis Workman Macnaghten (1763-1843), Judge of the Supreme Court of Madras 1809-1815, Senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William, Bengal 1815-1825; Sir William Hay Macnaghten, Bart (1793-1841), Madras Army 1809, Bengal Civil Service 1814-41, Envoy and Minister at the Afghan Court of Shah Shuja from 1838; and other members of the Macnaghten family, collection reference Mss Eur F760, available to view in the Asian & African Studies Reading Room, and the catalogue is searchable on Explore Archives and Manuscripts.

Other Macnaghten papers at the British Library:
• Addresses presented to Sir Francis Workman-Macnaghten (1763-1843), Senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William, Bengal, on his retirement and departure for Europe, 1822, shelfmark Mss Eur F718.
• Letter book, dated Feb 1839-Mar 1841, of Sir William Hay Macnaghten containing copies of his letters to the Governor-General Lord Auckland, and other British civil and military officers, on foreign political and administrative matters, and in particular on policy towards Afghanistan, shelfmark Mss Eur F336.

 

A travel journal of the British politician Stafford Northcote includes a first-hand account of the opening of the Suez Canal.

Sir Stafford Henry Northcote, 1st Earl of Iddesleigh, by Edwin Longsden Long (1882) NPG 2944 © National Portrait Gallery, London 

On 17 November 1869, the Suez Canal was opened for the first time and Sir Stafford Northcote, Earl of Iddesleigh and former Secretary of State for India, travelled to Port Said for the inaugural voyage.  Aboard Sir George Stucley’s yacht, the Deerhound, Northcote joined the procession down the new canal on the eighteenth vessel.

Steamships passing through the Suez Canal from Cassell's History of the War in the Soudan (London, 1885) BL flickr

The opening was attended by the great and the good, including the Emperor of Austria and Queen of Holland.  Following the opening ceremony, the evening of 16 November closed with a display of ‘illuminations’ and the dawn of 17 November began with a 21-gun salute!

However, the procession did not go completely to plan.  The captains navigating the new canal were short of experienced pilots to guide them.  The Deerhound soon received news that a vessel had run aground ahead.  This put them in ‘a ticklish position, sometimes drifting on to the bank, sometimes bashing’ into the ship in front.  Fortunately they were able to steer past several grounded vessels, and only briefly ‘stuck in the mud’ themselves.

On reaching Lake Timsah, the guests saw ‘a large building has been erected for a state ball, capable of accommodating 2000 or 3000 persons properly’ near the shore.  The Viceroy of Egypt had also summoned ‘a host of arab chiefs from Upper Egypt to come and encamp on the long sandy beach’.  Northcote praised the camp, calling it ‘by far the most interesting part of the sights which have been provided for us’.

In the evening, Northcote went ashore to attend the reception in the temporary ballroom.  He did not stay long, but took the opportunity to visit ‘the supper room and got some excellent ices, and dates, sugarplums, biscuits and very fair champagne at the buffet’.

Map of the Suez Canal from Lucien Lanier, L'Afrique (Paris, 1899) BL flickr

But the aim of the trip was not champagne and dancing.  On reaching Port Said, Northcote wondered at the luck of Egypt, now able to ‘boast the possession at once of the oldest and the newest of the great works of man’.  And on completing his voyage he began to consider the economic impact of this new trade route:
‘What the effect of the canal may be upon commerce it is too early to speculate.  Will Marseilles and Lyons fair so much by the abbreviation of the route to India as to cut out Liverpool and Manchester?  Or shall we build vessels which will run through from England to Bombay?’

Cover of Northcote's travel journal – photograph by Matthew Waters

Northcote’s voyage from Falmouth to Egypt to see the new canal and back again was recorded in his travel journal which is now available to view at the British Library (Add MS 89674/1).  This volume also includes a record of a second trip around the Mediterranean in 1882.  It is accompanied by a second diary (Add MS 89674/2) covering two journeys to North America in 1870 and in 1871.

Matthew Waters
Manuscripts Cataloguer

Further Reading:
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography – Northcote, Stafford Henry, first Earl of Iddesleigh
Add MS 89674/1 - Journal of Stafford Northcote recording trips to Egypt and around the Mediterranean
Opening of the Suez Canal

 

Alice Thornton (1626–1707), a Yorkshire gentlewoman, made sure that her life didn’t go untold by writing at least four versions of it in the 1660s to 1690s, two of which were acquired by the British Library in 2009. But why was she so keen to record her life and what was the significance of a chick-induced eye injury which she included?

Flyleaf of Add MS 88897/2, with Thornton’s monogram (AWT), the date of her husband’s death and a later inscription by her grandson.

Halfway through Thornton’s final autobiographical account, she tells a story about the writing of an earlier book:

‘About March 25, 1669, I was writing of my first book of my life to enter the sad sicknesses and death of my dear husband, together with all those afflictions befell me that year, with the remarks of God’s dealing with myself, husband and children until my widowed condition… There happened [to] me then a very strange and dangerous accident… as I was writing in my said book, I took out this poor chicken, out of my pocket, to feed it with bread and set it on the table besides me. It, picking about the bread innocently, did peep up at my left eye … [and] picked one pick at the white of my left eye … which did so extremely smart and ache that I could not look up or see.’

Thornton recounts the incident with the chick, below the line: Add MS 88897/2, page 177.

This story about her pet chicken, though, soon turns into an account of why she never forgave her niece, Anne Danby, for spreading rumours about her and her family, a topic that much consumes her in this final book. Danby – like the chick – had been taken in, fed and looked after by Thornton. This connection is explicitly made by Thornton:  

‘There was some who jested with me and said they had heard of an old saying of bringing up a chicken to peck out their eye. But now they saw I had made good that old saying both in this bird and [in] what harm I had suffered from Mrs Danby of whom I had been so careful and preserved her and hers from starving.’

‘Upon my sad condition and sickness that befell me by the slanders raised against me, July 20^th 1668’: Add MS 88897/1, page 246.

It seems likely from internal evidence that Thornton was writing this final book in the 1690s, after the death of her only adult son. This loss might explain why Thornton writes so much about Danby’s earlier betrayal. Thornton’s main heir was now her daughter, also named Alice, who was married to Thomas Comber. Thornton’s close relationship with Comber was one of the topics of Danby’s gossip, as was his marriage to Thornton’s daughter (then only fourteen) in late 1668. Thornton was perhaps keen to set the record straight about this match a quarter of a century later, when the Thornton name was dying out and being succeeded by that of the Combers. 

The motives behind Thornton’s writing four versions of her life are being tackled by an AHRC-funded project, ‘Alice Thornton’s Books’, which will also make freely available an online edition of all four manuscripts.

Detail of a chicken pecking the ground, from a music score, 1650. British Library shelfmark: 59.e.19, between pages 30-31.

We haven’t been able to trace the saying about the chicken and the eye – have you heard it before?

CC-BY
Cordelia Beattie
Professor of Women’s and Gender History, University of Edinburgh

Creative Commons Attribution licence

Further Reading:

Cordelia Beattie, Suzanne Trill, Joanne Edge, Sharon Howard. 'The Four Books By Alice Thornton'. Alice Thornton's Books [accessed 23 April 2023]

Charles Jackson. Ed. The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton of East Newton, Co. York. Durham: Surtees Society, 1875

Alice Thornton, My First Booke of My Life, ed. Raymond A. Anselment (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014)

In 1814 the East India ship Arniston was chartered as a British Government transport.  The ship sailed from Portsmouth in June and made for Ceylon, via Madeira and the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Colombo in January 1815.

The old lighthouse, flagstaff, and gun battery at Colombo from John Ferguson, Ceylon in 1893 (London, 1893) British Library shelfmark: Digital Store 010057.e.2

The Arniston sailed on its return voyage from Ceylon on 4 April 1815 in a convoy with two Royal Navy ships and six East Indiamen.  Squally weather and heavy seas drove the ship away from the convoy.  All the sails were blown away or bent.  On 30 May 1815 the ship heeled and broke apart near Cape Lagullas or Aguilhas at the southern tip of Africa.

Only six of the crew managed to reach the shore and survive: Charles Stewart Scott, Philip Shea, William Drummond, William Fish, Thomas Mansfield, and John Lewis .  They tried to walk to safety but feared they were lost, so returned to the wreck and subsisted mainly on a cask of oatmeal which had come ashore.  On 14 June they were discovered by a farmer’s son who was out shooting.  The men stayed with the farmer for a week and then set off for Cape Town, arriving there on 26 June to tell their tragic tale.

Report of the wreck of the Arniston, naming the survivors and dead - Mirror of the Times 28 October 1815 British Newspaper Archive

About 345 men, women, and children drowned.  There were British Army invalids, and about 100 seamen from British warships in India.  The named fatalities included Lord Molesworth, Lt Col in the 2nd Ceylon Regiment, and his wife Frances; Lt Gilbert Brice, Royal Navy Agent for Transports; and Anna Twisleton, 12-year-old daughter of the Archdeacon of Colombo.

In September 1815 reports of the wreck began to appear in British newspapers.  Death notices were placed by the families of some of the victims, including one for seventeen-year-old Samuel Nugent Legh Richmond., eldest son of Reverend Legh Richmond of Turvey in Bedfordshire.  His father had planned for Nugent, as he was known, to follow him into the priesthood, and was very disappointed when the young man decided that he wanted to go to sea.  Nugent was found a place in a merchant vessel sailing to Ceylon – the Arniston.  In June 1814 Reverend Richmond said goodbye to his son at Portsmouth, giving him a Bible.

The family received letters from Nugent written on the outward voyage, expressing his regret for his past conduct and his hope that one day he would be a consolation to his parents.  Then his father saw reports of the loss of the Arniston. Nugent was not listed amongst the survivors and his family was plunged into mourning.

But in the winter, a letter from Nugent arrived.  He had not embarked for the return voyage of the Arniston and seemed unaware of what had happened to the ship.  He was then third officer of the brig Kandian.

Nugent stayed in Asia, working in different merchant ships.  In 1824 he was shipwrecked, losing his private investment in the voyage and nearly all his personal belongings except for a small trunk containing his Bible, a copy of Annals of the Poor, two suits of clothes, and his watch.  A subscription of 100 guineas was raised by Reverend Thomas Thomason to help him.

Having postponed marrying his fiancée in Calcutta until he had made money on another voyage, Nugent returned to discover that she had died in his absence.  Nugent then decided to go to his family in England, but died of fever on the way.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Asiatic Journal 2 (1816) pp.32-34 - wreck of the Arniston
Thomas Shuttleworth Grimshawe, A Memoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond (5th edition, 1829) 
Thomas Fry, Domestic portraiture… (London, 1835)