Untold lives blog

Hot cross buns are a traditional Easter treat.  They are distinguished from other buns by the flavour of all-spice and a pale cross baked into their top.  Although they now appear in the supermarkets as soon as the Christmas mince pies have been cleared, hot cross buns used to be associated particularly with Good Friday.

In the early 19th century, Good Friday and Christmas Day were the only two ‘close holidays’  observed throughout London, with shops shut and churches open.  From dawn, street sellers were busy crying ‘Hot cross buns! One-a-penny, two-a-penny, hot cross buns!’ They carried their wares in baskets, with the buns covered first by a flannel or green baize, with an outer white cloth. As customers were served in the street or at their front door, the coverings were slowly and partially removed lest the buns should cool. The ‘hot’ aspect of the buns was evidently considered more important that it is today! The sellers’ ‘volume of concerted sound, unequalled by other rivals in the ephemeral Good Friday trade’ continued until it was time for church. Bun selling then resumed in the afternoon.

 
From Walter Crane, Triplets (1899) Images Online 

According to William Hone, the quality of hot cross buns was in decline in the 1820s as demand decreased. In the late 18th century pastry cooks and bakers had competed for excellence in making the buns, and ‘the great place of attraction for bun-eaters’ at that time were the two Chelsea ‘royal bun houses’.   Hundreds of square black tins with dozens of hot buns on each were produced for sale at Chelsea from six in the morning until the evening of Good Friday.

A Good Friday bun was sometimes kept for luck and hung from the ceiling until replaced by a fresh one the following Easter.  The hanging bun was supposed to protect the house from fire.

Not everyone was a fan of hot cross buns.  On 23 March 1826 The Morning Post published a letter from ’A Friend to Reverence’ who believed the practice of ‘crying the crossbuns’ through the streets of London and the neighbouring villages on Good Friday to be ‘irreverent and profane’.  Good Friday should not be celebrated as a day of feasting: ‘I have myself a family of little ones, who…are naturally fond of the produce of a confectioner’s shop; but I never allow of any of the cakes so marked, to be brought into my house. My motive is explained to them, and the temporary disappointment is repaired on the Easter Monday’.

The next day (Maundy Thursday) the newspaper published an opposing view: ‘I have no children to have the pleasure of giving them, to-morrow morning, as many cross buns as I would kisses.  Whatever, therefore, the origin of cross buns, the intention manifested by them is good; no argument is so powerful as that which gratifies the taste and liking of man or child; let cross buns be cried about as usual, to-morrow morning’.

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further reading:
William Hone, The Every-day Book (1825)
British Newspaper Archive – The Morning Post 23 and 24 March 1826

Today is St Piran’s Day.  Celebrations take place throughout Cornwall every year on 5 March in memory of this Cornish patron saint.

St Piran was born in Ireland in the 5th century.  Legend has it that he was thrown off a cliff with a millstone round his neck in the midst of a storm.  As soon as Piran hit the sea, the waters calmed and he floated to Cornwall on the millstone, landing near Perranporth.  Piran built a small chapel there and preached Christianity to the local people.

Piran became interested in the rocks and stones along the coast.  He built a hut with a hearth made from a single slab of black stone. One night, as the fire burned with a great heat, Piran was amazed to see a stream of white metal trickling out from the hearth.  By accident Piran had discovered tin. The Cornish flag is the cross of St Piran – a white cross on a black background representing white tin flowing from dark ore.

 
John Hassell, View of a tin works near Truro in Cornwall (1798) Maps K.Top.9.36.1.c  

Piran shared his discovery with the local people who were delighted with this source of prosperity. Cornish tin miners adopted Piran as their patron saint and kept St Piran’s Day as a holiday of great feasting. Mine owners often paid the men sixpence or one shilling as a bonus for 5 March. The miners’ merry-making prompted the saying ‘as drunk as a Perraner’. Perhaps it is no surprise that the day after St Piran’s Day is known as ‘Mazey Day’, suggesting the befuddlement caused by carousing.

There is an annual procession at Perranporth on a Sunday in early March to remember St Piran, with participants carrying Cornish flags and armfuls of daffodils. Celebrations on 5 March are not confined to Cornwall. In 1936 the Bradford and District Cornish Association held their ninth annual meeting on St Piran’s Day and celebrated with a supper and a whist drive.  In the USA there is a pasty-tossing Olympics at which a Cornish pasty is thrown at a St Piran’s flag laid out on the ground about 200 metres away.

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further Reading:
A A Clinnick, The Story of the three churches of St. Piran (Truro, 1936)
British Newspaper Archive e.g. The Cornishman 12 March 1936
Aw! how I ded long for a tatie pasty!   

In June 1907, an Englishman named Gabriel Joseph Edmund Trevor Guays arrived at the British Political Agency in Kuwait and declared his intention to travel to Riyadh in the centre of the Arabian Peninsula in order to improve his Arabic. Guays claimed to have converted to Islam two and a half years previously in Rangoon and to have adopted the ‘Muhammadan’ name, Haji Abdur Rahman, the ‘Haji’ signifying that Guays had made the hajj to Mecca. He had been Assistant Manager of a mining syndicate in Gujarat before departing for Kuwait.

IOR/R/15/1/508, f. 166 First page of letter from the British Political Agent in Kuwait, Stuart George Knox, to the British Political Resident in the Persian Gulf, Percy Zachariah Cox, 19 June 1907

At this time, central Arabia was in a tumultuous state due to the conflict between the Emirate of Ha’il and the newly-formed Emirate of Riyadh of the Al Saud. A British subject entering Al Saud territory could easily be suspected of espionage, complicating the British Government’s relationship with Ibn Saud.

 Raiding Party of Ibn Saud: Wikimedia commons image from Riyadh National Musuem

Stuart George Knox, British Political Agent in Kuwait, reported the incident to his superior, Percy Zachariah Cox, the British Political Resident in the Persian Gulf:  Guays had “no qualifications whatsoever, except apparently a limited sum of money, good health and plenty of enterprise”. Knox had “tried to persuade him what a silly thing he was doing” but Guays had remained undeterred. Knox took Guays to talk to the ruler of Kuwait, Shaikh Mubarak Al Sabah, who informed Guays that he was on a “mighty risky venture” and he would be wise to “sit in Koweit [Kuwait] until the extreme heat wore off, perfect his Arabic and think over his plan”. Guays responded that he did not have sufficient funds for this, so Shaikh Mubarak offered to write a letter to Ibn Saud. Knox also agreed to write a letter making it clear that Guays “was not in any shape or form deputed by [the British] Government”.

IOR/R/15/1/508, f. 169 Copy of the statement of Gabriel Joseph Edmund Trevor Guays sent from  Knox to Cox, 19 June 1907

Knox concluded his letter to Cox by questioning how sincere Guays’ religious faith was, stating “I think his Islam sits lightly on him. There is something a little incongruous in a Muhammadan being interested in the Derby list [the list of horses participating in the Derby horse race]”.

Cox rebuked Knox for his actions, finding it difficult to reconcile Knox’s diary entry (“The general impression among the Arabs is that he is an English spy and that Islam is a pretence”) with his actions of introducing Guays to Shaikh Mubarak and offering to write a letter to Ibn Saud.  Although Cox had “every personal sympathy” with Guay’s “enterprising aspiration” he had embarked upon it at an “inopportune juncture”. If Guays was likely to attempt to continue on to Riyadh, Knox would be “well-advised to arrange that he receives an unmistakeable hint from Sheikh Mubarek to leave by the next British India steamer”.

IOR/R/15/1/508, f. 168 Copy of a letter written to Ibn Saud by Knox on behalf of Guays, 15 June 1907

Knox apologised to Cox for his “error of judgement”. He had told Guays that if he persisted with his plan Knox would inform Shaikh Mubarak that the British Government objected and “expected that he would use every means in his powers to prevent it”. Guays “grudgingly” gave Knox his word that he would not follow through and would inform Knox when he was leaving Kuwait. The papers do not record what Guays did next.

Exploration of central Arabia by government employees such as Bertram Thomas or William Shakespear was welcomed as it was understood that they would act in Britain’s interests and that any knowledge gained in their endeavours would be put to service of the empire. Guays was an unknown entity and it is unlikely that he ever made it to Riyadh.

Louis Allday (@Louis_Allday)
Gulf History/Arabic Specialist, Gulf History Project 

Further reading:
IOR/R/15/1/508 'File 53/37, 61/5 (D 17) Kuwait: British Representation'
Madawi al-Rasheed, Politics in an Arabian Oasis: The Rashidi Tribal Dynasty (I.B Tauris, London, 1997)

World War One had an impact on some surprising people.  The Government of India reacted to the events in Europe by interning and repatriating Austrian and German citizens including missionaries and madams, who were the subject of an earlier story on Untold Lives. 

The expulsion of missionaries had a major impact on organisations like the Leipzig Evangelical Lutheran Mission. Removal of the German Jesuits from British India was reported in Ireland and William F. Dennehy, the outraged editor of The Irish Catholic,  even wrote to the India Office defending the priests.

Nathan Adderblom, Archbishop of Uppsala, wrote to the Royal British Minister at Stockholm to suggest sending Swedish ladies to help run eleven stations, 194 outstations, 57 schools with 3,405 pupils, and a medical mission. He recommended Ellen Hakansson, Malin (Amalia) Ribbing and Ingrid Söderberg, but these applications were initially refused on the grounds of a policy of exclusion while the war lasted. The agitation of the Indian National Party in Stockholm and its suspected links to the Germans was another obstacle. It must have been especially difficult for Ingrid Söderberg, who was engaged to Reverend Paul Sandegren, who was already working in Tranquebar.

After numerous interventions by the Swedish authorities and the involvement of the Archbishop of Canterbury, permission was granted to four missionaries to travel to India. By that time the war was over, the danger of German spies and of submarines torpedoing passenger liners was gone, and the Swedes could finally go. Detailed applications with photographs are in the India Office Records.

 Ellen Josephina Hokannson  

Ellen Josephina Hokannson came from Helsingborg, but was born in Malmo in 1881. She had worked in India before, serving at Pudukotah from 1907 to 1914. She wanted to go back there for another seven or eight years. She had good relations with the London Missionary Society, whose members Reverend  Parker and his wife were willing to recommend her.     

   Ingrid Maria Söderberg 

Ingrid Maria Söderberg was born in Uppsala in 1887. She wanted to work for the Mission of the Church of Sweden at Madura and hoped to marry Paul Sandegren after five years of waiting. Her dream came true when they took their vows at Virudupati on 6 April 1920. In 1955 Ingrid sailed to Bombay on the Chusan travelling with an Indian passport. It was her home.  

        Bertil Gustav Israel Sjöstrand 

Bertil Gustav Israel Sjöstrand and his wife Rut Hedvig Sjöstrand both came from clergy families. They were a young and eager couple wanting to join Ellen Hokannson at Pudukotah. He was born in Tofteryd and her origins were in Oppeby. 

   Rut Hevig Sjöstrand  
 

Bertil was educated in England at Cliff College Training Home and Mission in 1919. Both he and Rut had difficulties obtaining  visas but eventually, after intervention from the Conference of Missionary Societies and the Wesleyan Home Mission, they got permission to travel to India. They lived at a mission of the Church of Sweden at Kodaikand with their children.

Dorota Walker
Reference Specialist, Asian and African Studies

Furrther reading:

IOR/L/PJ/6/1441 File 2012 Case of seven Swedish missionaries requesting permits to enable them to proceed to Madras, Dec 1915-Jan 1920.

British in India Collection for baptisms, marriages and burials from the India Office Records

Some readers of this blog will know that we at the British Library have spent the last few years developing an integrated catalogue for our archives and manuscripts collections which is made available online as Search our Catalogue Archives and Manuscripts.  A bonus of having all the catalogue records in one system is that we can now share them with projects en masse beyond the British Library, and this includes the 300,000 or so records of the people who were involved in the creation of, or who are the subject of, the archives and manuscripts.

These records then have been included in the US based Social Networks and Archival Context project – more memorably known as SNAC.  Part of this is looking at how to help researchers find all the relevant material relating to a particular person, both archives and publications and so has developed a ‘Prototype Research Tool’  with this in mind: 

 

 
The British Library’s records are included alongside those from many US institutions and data is being loaded from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and university repositories in the UK. Anyone can click one of the ‘featured’ images on the front page or search for an individual they are interested in. The result will be a page for an individual such as this entry for Robert Clive:

 Here information about related archive collections is presented with links back to the originating repository’s catalogue, where details of how to get access to the material can be found. There are also links to publications and other resources relating to the person with links to WorldCat  which again can help with accessing the material.

The project is also interested finding out if the links between people found in catalogues when they are brought together in this way might help researchers navigate around all this data, so as well as providing links to related people the project provides a visualisation for the social and professional ‘network’ of individuals in a ‘radial graph view’ such as this one again for Robert Clive:

 

Given the richness of the catalogues and the millions of records included links can be found to the humble individual as well as the ‘great and the good’, so here can be seen a link between Lord Clive and one Mrs Bayly Brett, whose commonplace book includes a copy of a letter written by him to his mother in 1757.

Please have a look at SNAC and tell us what you think. Happy hunting!

Bill Stockting
Cataloguing Systems & Processing Co-ordinator

Specialist professions such as these are just some of the fascinating details about life in India which are revealed by the reports of the ten-yearly Census of India. It’s a familiar source of information, but each time I look at it, I am amazed by the way in which it records minute details about everyday life. The buffoons, ear-pickers and sherbet-sellers feature in the tables of occupations in the 1891 report on the Punjab. Interestingly, the table of statistics records the number of people dependent on an occupation, including women and children, not just the people employed in the work. Buffoons were a great rarity with just 20 people in the British territory in the Punjab supported by their efforts to entertain. Ear-picking supported 144 people so this was also a minority profession compared with selling and preparing sherbet which provided for 2,047. ‘Undefined and disreputable’ occupations are listed, including prostitution which supported 6,193 men, women and children.

A Muslim barber, Add. 27255 f.211v
Images Online

 Education and literature supported 11,752 and 6,650 people respectively, and included teachers, authors, reporters, private secretaries and clerks, students and pandits. It is pleasing to note the inclusion of 'library service' under literature. However, people working in libraries may have been even more rare than ear-pickers, supporting only 121 people!

Portrait of Diwan Babu Ram with papers, books, pen-cases and spectacles, Add. Or. 1264
Images Online

Agriculture, manufacturing and commerce were of course the major sources of income. Civil and military service, ranging from people employed as officials and officers to ‘menials’, provided for 182,239 people while ‘professional’ occupations supported 135,834. Reflecting the almost obsessive drive to gather and organise information, these figures are broken down into sub-sections. For example, professional occupations include religion, education, literature, law, medicine, engineering and surveying, other sciences, pictorial art and sculpture, music, acting and dancing, sport, and finally exhibitions and games, which is where I found the buffoons. A separate table shows how people combined an interest in the land with other occupations. Regional variations are revealed by the statistics for individual districts. These statistics, far from being dry and boring, provide a fascinating snapshot of life in the Punjab in 1891.

Summary created from the detailed statistics relating to Districts and States 
Census of India, 1891: the Punjab and its Feudatories, Vol XIX Part II: Imperial Tables and Supplementary Returns, IOR/V/15/46

The Punjab volume of the 1891 Census of India includes text which explains the methodology underlying the statistics and makes observations on history and society. Subjects include population, religion, marriage, health, language, migration, occupations, and of course the perennial obsession – castes, tribes and races. Maps illustrating population changes, migration, religion, the distribution of lepers and blind people, and the proportion of male to female children highlight the interests of the British information-gatherers.  


Frontispiece to Census of India, 1891: the Punjab and its Feudatories, Vol XIX Part I, IOR/V/15/46

Although the Census of India reflects British preoccupations, observations and understanding of India, imaginative reading of the source provides marvellous insights into how people lived and worked. It is also a reminder of the importance of knowledge in maintaining a position of power.

Further reading
IOR/V/15 Census Reports 1853-1944
These comprise the decennial census of India 1871-1941 and a few earlier provincial census reports.

Penny Brook
Lead Curator, India Office Records

Text   

Images   

General Charles Rainsford was a remarkable man in many ways. A professional soldier, diplomat, politician and inveterate traveller, he was also a well-connected man of the enlightenment interested in many aspects of science.

Fortunately Rainsford left behind a huge archive, held primarily at the British Library.  This includes papers on freemasonry, magnetism, and alchemical processes, and a journal of Rainsford's travels with the Duke of Gloucester.

Charles Rainsford was Commissary of Troops in the Low Countries in 1776–78. There he was charge of the shipping and transportation of mostly German/Hessian mercenaries, recruited to supplement British Army forces fighting in North America during the Revolutionary War. This posting bought Rainsford into contact with many prominent London ship-owners, merchants and their continental agents who supplied him with the necessary merchant ships.

Rainsford was a cousin of Sir Joseph Banks, another colossus of the enlightenment and they lived close to one another in Soho Square, London.  Both men were Freemasons with Rainsford taking a very active role through membership of several lodges both in England and on the continent.  Rainsford was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 13 May 1779, and he was also a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

 
Alchemy furnace, from Alchemical Discourse, Latin manuscript, 15th century ©De Agostini/The British Library Board Images Online

General Rainsford was deeply interested in religion and the occult.  He was a Rosicrucian and a Swedenborgian, having Carl Wadstrom as a friend and correspondent. He sought out mystics such as the London based Rabbi Dr Samuel Falk, the celebrated 'seerer' of Wellclose Square, and the mysterious Scandinavian Alchemist and ship’s surgeon Dr Sigismund Bacstrom. Rainsford was aware that Bacstrom was an excellent Chymist having had dealings with him through his alchemic interests and his close friend Peter Woulfe FRS, a Swedenborgian and inventor.

East London in the eighteenth century has until now often been portrayed by historians as a 'dank, dark and dangerous place'. But recently Derek Morris and I have discovered new evidence to challenge this view.  General Rainsford was a friend of the renowned naturalist Daniel Solander, secretary to Sir Joseph Banks and patron of the Swedish Church which was located in Princes Square close to Wellclose Square where many prominent sugar refiners lived.

This church was a hub for the Scandinavian merchant community in London. Many Scandinavian merchants and ship-owners had businesses based in Wapping. Some were engaged in the Scandinavian timber trade, so important for the building of British navy warships, for example the Lindgrens, Gustavas Brander, and Abraham Spalding.  Brander was a patron of the British Museum and friend to Daniel Solander and Sigismund Bacstrom, both of whom accompanied Sir Joseph Banks on his voyage to Iceland in 1772.  Rainsford no doubt used these circles for intelligence on shipping as well has for keeping tabs on certain scientific work which was at this time still in its infancy.  

I am currently engaged in further research on General Rainsford and Sigismund Bacstrom. The British Library’s Rainsford Papers are an important resource for everyone who is interested in this complex and remarkable man.

Ken Cozens
Greenwich Maritime Institute Associate

Further reading:

Rainsford Papers BL, Add. MSS 23644–23680

Derek Morris and Ken Cozens, Wapping 1600-1800: A Social History of an Early Modern London Maritime Suburb

East London stereotypes challenged - a previous blog post by Derek and Ken

Queen Anne, last of the Stuart line of monarchs, died on 1 August 1714.  Three hundred years later, she is still brought to mind through the expressions ‘Queen Anne is dead’ and ‘As dead as Queen Anne’. 

‘Queen Anne is dead’ is a response made to someone who has relayed stale news or stated the obvious.  One explanation of the origin of this rejoinder is that the Queen’s death was kept quiet until the Hanoverian succession was assured.  However news leaked out and so by the time an official announcement was made the death was already common knowledge.

Egerton 2572, f.18 Anne, queen of Great Britain and Ireland.  Images Online 

The phrase ’As dead as Queen Anne’ appears frequently in articles and letters in the British Newspaper Archive.  It is used to describe a surprising number and variety of concepts, objects and creatures: women’s suffrage, Irish partition, Sunday closing, sewage disposal, square dances, insects, weed control with corrosive acid, and the traditional social order.

Queen Anne’s funeral effigy can be seen in the museum at Westminster Abbey. Effigies were modelled from actual death masks and used at the head of funeral processions, then placed for a time above the tomb.  They are still dressed in original clothes belonging to the dead person.

In 1928 the Abbey’s display of effigies was the subject of newspaper articles. It was said to be ‘the grimmest waxwork show in the world’, more frightening than the new Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s.  Eleven wax effigies stood ‘staring pallidly at each other’.  King Charles II was ‘a strange figure, with his little fierce black moustache, piercing eyes and claw-like hands’.  An Abbey guide remarked that the death-mask of Queen Elizabeth Tudor was the one true portrait of her, being the only one that did not seek to flatter. He added ‘There is proof that Queen Anne is indeed dead, for here is her death mask’.

King William and Queen Mary were shown as they appeared at their coronation.  William’s effigy was standing on a cushion which he had ordered to raise his height and bring him level with his taller wife. A child visitor pointed to the couple and exclaimed ‘”Daddy put a penny in, and make them jump about”.

Although Nelson was buried at St Paul’s Cathedral, his effigy was given to the Abbey.  The Admiral’s blind eye had been cleverly reproduced and there was a large pin on the shoulder of his Navy uniform to mark the site of his fatal wound.

The Duke of Buckingham held a gold walking stick and wore long-toed white shoes.  His face was ‘extremely pale, depicting a consumptive’.  The Duchess of Richmond, said to be the model for Britannia on coins, was accompanied by her stuffed pet parrot.

The fragility of the clothing was described, the once fine lace, rich furs and velvets ‘in many cases hanging in shreds, dusty and faded’.   Yet the London correspondent of the Evening Telegraph found the effigies ‘so lifelike that they are most uncanny.  One begins almost to suspect that life is not altogether extinct in those silent figures that stare through the dusty glass of the cases containing them’.

Margaret Makepeace
Curator, India Office Records 

Further reading:

British Newspaper Archive

Nottingham Evening Post 2 May 1928

Yorkshire Evening Post 2 May 1928

Evening Telegraph 22 May 1928