Untold lives blog

On 27 January 1859 in the Kronprinzenpalais in Berlin, Prince Friedrich Victor Wilhelm Albert Hohenzollern – Queen Victoria’s first grandchild– was born with his left arm around his neck.  It took three days for anyone to notice the arm had been damaged, but it was a problem which the future Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia would spend the rest of his life trying to conceal.

Prince Wilhelm was left with Erb’s Palsy after a protracted breech birth during which the two attending doctors were hamstrung by royal etiquette forcing them to work beneath the mother’s skirts, and the message summoning Berlin’s foremost obstetrician got lost.  Permanent withering of the arm was probably caused by damage done to the nerves in his arm and neck by the forceps which dragged him out.  Born blue, he was initially presumed dead and only brought round by vigorous rubbing which probably only made the nerve damage worse.  It has often been speculated that oxygen deprivation at birth also left him with minor brain damage, a theory which certainly would explain the unstable personality for which he would become infamous.

In early infancy, it became clear that the young Prince’s left arm was not growing properly.  His left hand was a claw and the arm a shrunken dead weight. Physical prowess was prized amongst the Prussian royals, so from the age of six months the Prince began to undergo arcane but undeniably imaginative treatments intended to fix his damaged arm.  Some treatments were inoffensively useless – the arm was sprayed with seawater, massaged and wrapped in cold compresses – but others were more macabre.  The practice of weekly “animal baths”, which essentially required the arm to be shoved inside the carcass of a freshly killed animal so that the heat might galvanise the shrivelled tissue, was thought by Queen Victoria to be revolting and idiotic.  The method of binding the young Prince’s good arm to his body so that his left arm would “have to work” did little except compromise his balance, whilst drastic electric shock therapy was administered when he was barely a year old.  At the age of four, he was placed in a body-stretching machine akin to a medieval rack to correct the various muscular problems that had developed in his neck and shoulders.

'The Kaiser and Prince Henry of Prussia arrive to-day'. Report for Thursday 19 May 1910. Image taken from Daily Sketch. Images Online 

 
As an adult, the Kaiser was semi-successful in hiding the withered arm.  In formal pictures, he typically posed with his left hand resting on his sword with the right on top, and with gloves to provide distraction. His clothes were tailored with higher pockets to disguise the length of his left arm and he grew adept at shooting and riding with his right arm.  Historical videos show passable movement in his left arm and a 1915 edition of the Toronto World even claimed that  “a series of string and cords, acting like muscles…connected with the good muscles of the shoulder most adroitly, enable him to impart to it movements that are almost life-like”.  The Kaiser’s physical deficiency has often been identified as the key to his lust for military and imperial power and it is interesting to speculate on the course European history might have taken had he not had such a traumatic entry into the world.

Julia Armfield
Former Intern, Printed Historical Sources

Further Reading

Miranda Carter, The Three Emperors (London, 2009)

World War One on the British Library website

On 14 February 1797, the British and Spanish naval fleets met off the south-west coast of Portugal at the Battle of Cape St Vincent.  The Spanish were allied with France against Britain in the Revolutionary Wars.  Although the Spanish fleet was much larger, the British Navy under the command of Admiral Sir John Jervis was victorious.  Horatio Nelson in the Captain led the boarding parties which took the San Nicolas and the San Josef. 

Battle of Cape St. Vincent - Nelson boarding the San Josef and receiving the Spanish Admiral's sword. ©Lessing Archive/British Library Board Images Online 

The Captain of the Fleet Robert Calder was chosen to carry home the welcome news of victory. Calder was knighted for his services on 3 March 1797.  A rousing song was soon written by J Ogden junior to celebrate the victory.  One of the ways in which the words of the song were disseminated was through publication in regional newspapers, such as the Leeds Intelligencer of 20 March 1797 and the Chester Courant of 18 April 1797.  The words were to be sung to the tune of Valentine’s Day.

The British Tars’ Valentine

Or, the glorious 14th of February

When Morpheus veil’d the briny deep,

And landsmen all were gone to sleep,

Brave Jervis, with his gallant few,

Kept watch, in hopes the Dons to view.

For though their ships were three times nine,

Our Tars would have a Valentine.

    And pledg’d themselves ere they did dine,

    To send us home a Valentine.

When grey-ey’d morning dawn’d her light,

The Spanish squadron hove in sight;

Brave Jervis form’d two lines compact,

That with more vigour they might act:

For though their ships were three times nine,

Our Tars would have a Valentine.

    As they had pledg’d ere they did dine,

    To send us home a Valentine.

Our Tars quite bent upon their prey,

Impatient lest they’d skulk away:

Then Jervis bravely led them on;

‘Twas near the time of mid-day sun:

And though their ships were three times nine,

Undauntedly he broke their Line.

    For he stood pledg’d ere they did dine,

    His Tars should have a Valentine.

The Spanish fleet could not unite-

Such was the fury of the fight;

For every effort which they try’d

Serv’d only more to curb their pride;

And though their ships were three times nine,

Our Tars fought for a Valentine.

    For they stood pledg’d ere they did dine,

    Britain should have a Valentine.

Just at the time of setting sun,

The Spaniards on all sides did run;

Leaving behind their Salvadore,

St. Joseph, aye, and two Saints more;

Our Tars then wash’d their throats with wine,

While Jervis form’d the Valentine.

    Then all in triumph went to dine,

    And Calder bore the Valentine.

Margaret Makepeace
Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading

British Newspaper Archive

A garland, containing seven choice songs, viz. 1. Young roger the Ploughman. 2. Good humour and wit. 3. The British tars Valentine. 4. Feather Paul. 5. The dumb wife cur'd. 6. A favorite song. 7. The Cobler. Preston : printed by E. Sergent, in the Market-Place; where may be had, the greatest Assortment of Songs and Histories, Wholesale & Retail, [1800?].

An unassuming financial file contained in the records of the British Political Agency in Bahrain (that now form a part of the India Office Records held at the British Library) unexpectedly contains two rare examples of Arabic-language propaganda posters produced by the British Government during World War II. Remarkably, the only reason that the two posters have been preserved in the records is because financial accounts of the Bahraini government are typed on their reverse. It appears that the posters were used by the Agency in place of paper due to a shortage in supplies caused by World War II.

 
IOR/R/15/1/355 f. 42

The accounts on the posters’ reverse are for the hijri calendar years 1362 and 1363 (c. 1943) but the posters themselves are not dated. However, given that one of them depicts a children’s mock parliament discussing the post-blitz re-planning of London, it appears that they were produced sometime after May 1941 (when the blitz ended) and thus are roughly contemporaneous with the financial accounts printed on their reverse.

Front Cover of ‘File 19/176 VI Bahrain Finances’ (IOR/R/15/1/355)

Both of the posters seek to promote a strong, progressive image of Britain and stress the involvement of school children (of both sexes) in British society and in shaping the future of the country. By depicting children involved in a mock parliament, one of the posters alludes not only to Britain’s actual parliament – in contrast with Germany’s dictatorial system – but also to the supposedly inclusive nature of a modern Britain that involved young people in broader issues related to society.

The other poster presents a more overtly militaristic image of British youth and has the tag line يتمرن طلبة المدارس بريطانيا اليوم ليكونوا صناع و جنود الغد [Students of British Schools Practice Today to be the Builders and Soldiers of Tomorrow]. The poster has a large image of a boy in British Army uniform firing a Bren Machine Gun. Its text discusses military service for youth in the country.

IOR/R/15/1/355 f. 41  Training the People: British Boys and Girls discussing the re-planning of London

 تدريب الشعب اولاد و بنات بريطانيا يتباحثون في اعادة تخطيط لندن

On both of the posters, the slogan 'For the Sake of Freedom' appears below a picture of the Union Jack flag. The use of this slogan is ironic to say the least given that at this time Britain still ruled over a vast global empire that robbed millions of people around the world of the very freedom that they were ostensibly fighting for. Indeed, many of the individuals at whom these Arabic-language posters were targeted were living in areas that were under the imperial domination of the British.

This was especially true in the case of Bahrain. Although the country was never formally a part of the British Empire, a series of treaties agreed between the British Government and the Al Khalifa family in the nineteenth century had given Britain control over Bahrain’s foreign relations, incorporating the country into the British Imperial system.

'For the Sake of Freedom' (detail from IOR/R/15/1/355 f. 42)

During World War II, the Middle East was the site of a propaganda struggle between Great Britain and its allies, and Nazi Germany and the other axis powers. As my earlier blog post demonstrated, propaganda produced by the German Government – in this case radio broadcasts in Arabic – found a receptive ear in some areas of the Persian Gulf. The British made efforts to counter this German propaganda by radio broadcasts of their own and through the production of printed materials such as these posters.

Louis Allday
British Library/Qatar Foundation Partnership

Qatar Digital Library

Twitter @Louis_Allday

Seasonal Greetings!  Today we’re bringing you Christmas Day 1899 from the besieged town of Ladysmith in Natal.

The Second Anglo Boer War began on 11 October 1899.  After the battles of Dundee and Elandslaagte, General George Stuart White ordered the British troops to retreat to Ladysmith.  Having bombarded the town with shells from 30 October, the Boers besieged Ladysmith from 2 November, cutting off railway and telegraph communication.  Over 21,000 civilian and military personnel were trapped.  The threat of starvation and disease loomed large as the siege dragged on for 118 days.  Polluted water was an acute problem.

In his diary of the siege, Henry Nevinson of the Daily Chronicle noted that there was no ceasefire on Christmas Day 1899: ‘The Boer guns gave us an early Christmas carol, and at intervals all day they joined in the religious and social festivities’.  There were about 250 European children left in the town so four enormous trees were set up and decorated.  Father Christmas decked out in swansdown braved the heat. In the evening each child was given a present. A dance for the adults was then held.

'Band' of Natal Mounted Rifles in red and gold paper tabards, with tin whistles and drums made from empty casks covered with raw hides. From H St J Tugman, The siege of Ladysmith in 120 pictures.

Nevinson reported that the soldiers’ Christmas dinner was enough to mark the day.  Compared with ordinary short rations, a helping of pudding, a pinch of tobacco, and a drop of rum were rare treats. Food could still be purchased in Ladysmith but prices were sky-high: 28 potatoes sold in the market on Christmas Eve for 30s; a goose cost £3; a turkey £5.  

This Christmas Day menu comes from the papers of General Sir George Stuart White.  He seems to have dined somewhat better than his men.

IOPP/MSS Eur F108/76

The menu is written in French and full of jokey references to the British predicament.  The meal opened with game soup ‘au pipsqueak’, a type of shell.  After this came mutton chops followed by goose with Guides sauce and roast mutton with boiled ‘Pom Pom’. ‘Pom Pom’ was the name given to the 1lb shell being dropped on the town; others were known as ‘Weary Willie’, ‘Nasty Knox’, and ’Long Tom’. The next course was cold asparagus with Hollandaise sauce - surely a nod to the Dutch origins of the Boers?  This was accompanied by ham ‘aux bombes’. The next two courses were hellfire plum pudding and Kruger cheese. And lastly ‘desert’ rather than ‘dessert’ to end a memorable Christmas meal.


Margaret Makepeace
Curator, East India Company Records


Further reading:
Papers of General Field Marshal Sir George Stuart White (1835-1912) IOPP/MSS Eur F108– Siege of Ladysmith IOPP/MSS Eur F108/76.
H W Nevinson, Ladysmith - The diary of a siege (1900)
H St J Tugman, The siege of Ladysmith in 120 pictures (1900)

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

Guest blogger Dr Maya Parmar, Research Associate at the Open University, marks the publication of Asian Britain, a photographic history published in partnership with the British Library.

Growing up in North London, where I was born, I was acutely aware that neither my family nor I had a stake in patriotic narratives that centred upon grandfathers and great grandfathers who had heroically fought in world wars.  This, I thought, was because my heritage stretched across to India.  Archives deposited within the British Library, however, confront this misnomer.  They highlight key contributions South Asians made in British war efforts, both in the trenches in the First World War, as well as during the Second World War.  These moments in history where imperial subjects made crucial contributions to British war efforts, now unveiled, redistribute and share memories that are largely absent in the way we remember participation in conflicts.  A testament to these hidden stories of conflict, and to the many more interventions South Asians have made, is Asian Britain: A Photographic History.  Having been published earlier this month, this photographic history, authored by Professor Susheila Nasta and compiled with Dr Florian Stadler, extensively draws upon the British Library’s collections.  The book extends the research of a long collaboration between the British Library and The Open University on the Making Britain and Beyond the Frame projects.

British Library SW 107, also in Asian Britain, pilots  have joined the RAF to compensate for shortages (1942) 

Alongside representations of South Asians during wartime, Asian Britain too foregrounds other stories that tell of the multifaceted and long relationship between the subcontinent and Britain.  One of these is the narrative of the South Asian community displaced from their settled homes in East Africa, in the sixties and seventies.  Many of these families came to Britain, and indeed mine was one of them.  The painful expulsion of the Asian community from Uganda in 1972, by Idi Amin, is emblematic of this larger history. 2012 marked forty years since this moment when Britain became the home of many double migrants: double migrants who had first settled in Africa from India, and have since become an integral part of British life.  These forty years can, however, be contextualised by a much longer four hundred year old presence of South Asians in Britain, and it is this surprising, complex and challenging history Asian Britain pictures.

Maya Parmar
[email protected]

You may be surprised to learn that there are documents about Italians in the India Office Records.  Family, military, and social historians will find much of interest in the records of Italian prisoners and internees held in India during the Second World War.

A two-volume alphabetical list of Italian prisoners of war can be found in the India Office Military Department files, compiled from card indexes and nominal rolls prepared in the camps on or about 24 March 1942.  It was an attempt to combine into a single register the names of all Italian prisoners of war other than merchant seamen who were held in India on that date, or who had previously died in India.

On each page the entries are listed by surname, first name, rank, “M. E. number”, corps, and camp number.  The figures in the last column denote the number of the camp in which the prisoner is held.  Where there is more than one figure, the first shows his location on 24 March 1942, and the last represents the latest information which could be included in the list.  Owing to extensive transfers, this is not always up to date. The information following on from the camp numbers, e.g.  R.28.4.45, indicates the man's release date.

Second World War Italian Propaganda poster ©De Agostini  Images Online

Another useful file from the Public and Judicial Department of the India Office Records is entitled  'Internees: release and repatriation of Italian and other foreign internees in India'.  This has detailed information of Italian internees including names, addresses, occupations, and next of kin, covering the period September 1943 - July 1948.  These files are a boon for those trying to trace their Italian heritage.  I used them in a presentation given to the Anglo-Italian Family History Society in autumn 2012.

John Chignoli
Asian & African Studies Reference Services 


Further reading:

IOR/L/MIL/5/1069 Italian POWs surnames A - I
IOR/L/MIL/5/1070 Italian POWs surnames J - Z

IOR/L/PJ/8/35 Internees: release and repatriation of Italian and other foreign internees in India 1943-1948