Category Archives: Victorian History

Indian Mutiny – a summary

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On 10 May 1857, the Indian Mutiny, as it became known, erupted in the town of Meerut in northern India. Discontent among the native Indian soldiers, the sepoys, had been simmering for months if not decades but the violence, when it came, took the British completely by surprise. History In An Hour looks at the causes of the Indian Mutiny.*

Indian SepoyBy 1857, the East India Company, the monolithic, monopolising commercial company that conducted trade in India and had become the de facto rulers of the country on behalf of the British government, ruled two thirds of India. The remaining third was overseen by Indian princes who paid tribute to the British. That the East India Company could maintain its authority was down to the might of its huge army, consisting of 45,000 Europeans and 230,000 Indian sepoys. While most sepoys were glad and even proud to serve in the army, their loyalty to it always took second place to their religion

Religious sensibilities

Sepoys of all faiths were concerned for their respective religions. The prospect of being made to serve overseas, for example, alarmed Hindu sepoys as travelling over water was a compromise of caste.

Their fears were not without foundation – there was among the British an evangelical element keen on converting the Indian masses to Christianity and to persuade them to turn their backs on the ‘monsters of lust, injustice, wickedness and cruelty’, to use William Wilberforce (1759-1833)’s phrase to describe Hindu divinities. In the early nineteenth century, the British had outlawed various religious traditions, and were now spreading their influence, building Christian schools and snatching orphaned Indian children to be brought up as Christians. (A Western education, the British believed, would eventually lead to greater responsibility and equip the Indian for eventual self-rule.)

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The Irish Famine – a summary

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The Irish famine was without doubt the worst humanitarian crisis to hit the Victorian world. Over a million people starved to death whilst two million more fled the Irish shores forever creating the beginnings of the huge Irish diasporas which still exist in today North America, Canada, Australia and also, of course, London.

A Land of Poverty

Irish famineIreland by the middle of the Nineteenth Century was a land of tenant farmers, agricultural labourers and small holders known as cottiers. Many cottiers were “bound” tenant farmers, who in return for working other farms, would be “paid” by being allowed to grow potatoes on tiny strips of land known as conacres. The diet of these people, who spoke Gaelic and worshipped a Catholic God, consisted almost solely of potatoes with a tiny bit of milk, buttermilk or sometimes fish as their only other source of nourishment. It was estimated that the average cottier or labourer ate around twelve to fourteen pounds of potatoes a day. The diet was boring but it was also filling and nutritious, and until the 1840s, reliable but then blight arrived on Irish shores having already swept across Europe devastating potato crops in its wake.

The blight

Historians aren’t certain where the blight that caused the Irish famine came from but it’s believed this new fungus probably arrived on ships from Peru or even North America. The blight – Phytophthora infestans – grew on the under surface of the potato leaves and consisted of an extremely fine filament ending in thousands of minute spores.  Ireland’s climate of endless rains and strong winds, meant the fungus was able to spread extremely rapidly devastating the potato crops, season after season, causing a humanitarian catastrophe on an epic scale. But its effects were severely worsened by the actions (or perhaps we should say, inactions) of the British government, headed by Lord John Russell, in the crucial years from 1846 to 1852.

One million dead, another two million fled

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Victorian London – Overground, Underground

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‘Necessity is the mother of Invention’.  If ever there was a phrase which summed up the London of the Victorian era, surely this one would be it.  Certainly, given the many problems which confronted it during this time, it is little wonder that the 19th century city responded by becoming a febrile hub of creativity and innovation – it could hardly have been otherwise if the metropolis was to avoid falling victim to its own success.

The ever-expanding city

London UndergroundThe root of city’s problems lay in the fact that the population of Greater London had, quite simply, exploded.  From 1801 to 1850, the number of people living in the city more than doubled from one million to 2.5 million, and by the turn of the century, that number would increase to an extraordinary 6.5 million inhabitants.

Unsurprisingly, such a rapid increase put London’s already poor infrastructure under severe strain, with the most obvious problem being transport, or more precisely, the lack of it.  Continuous urban sprawl had seen the city’s boundaries move ever outwards, and by the mid-1800s, once rural villages like Hampstead and Highgate had been voraciously swallowed up.  As such, improved transport links became a necessity – the increased distances and the sheer volume of demand meant that traditional modes of conveyance like stagecoaches and hackney carriages would no longer suffice.

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A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

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19 December 1843 witnessed the publication of one of Charles Dickens’ most popular and well-loved stories, A Christmas Carol. Published by Chapman and Hall, its initial print run of 6,000 copies sold out within days and within three months the story had been adapted for the theatre at least eight times.

Bayham Street

A Christmas CarolIn 1822, the Dickens family had lived at 16 Bayham Street in London. Situated in the less genteel suburb of Camden Town, Dickens described it as having a ‘basement, two ground floor rooms, two on the first floor, a garret and an outside wash-house.’ When describing the Cratchit family home in A Christmas Carol, it was to Bayham Street that Dickens looked for inspiration. Home to his parents, four siblings, his relative through marriage, James Lamert, and an orphan brought from the Chatham Workhouse, the house must have felt extremely cramped and considerably less comfortable than any previous family home.

It was not, however, a love of Christmas that inspired A Christmas Carol. The true inspiration came from the Second Report of the Children’s Employment Commission, published in 1842. This expose shocked the nation with its graphic depictions of the poverty and cruelty faced by children employed in factories and mines.

A Christmas Carol was followed by a further four Christmas tales in the 1840s: The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846),and The Haunted Man (1848). These stories became instant favourites among the public and created a link between Charles Dickens and Christmas that endures to this day.

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Echoes of the Great Game in Central Asia

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The history of the Great Game, writes Tim Hannigan, offers a fine stock of ripping yarns.

At the start of the 19th century some 2,000 miles of turbulent Central Asian territory – deserts, mountains and unstable Muslim khanates – separated Britain’s Indian territories from the edge of the Russian Empire; a hundred years later these same frontiers were just a few miles apart.  The “Great Game” was the cold war of exploration and espionage, fought out in the ever-contracting space between.

Every foreigner who stepped into Central Asia during this period was playing the Great Game, whether he wanted to or not.  There was no such thing as an apolitical expedition, and men who went to survey mountains and map passes found that the charts they drew were handled like dynamite by politicians in Calcutta, London and St Petersburg.  There was derring-do, endurance, betrayal, triumph and tragedy.  This is the stuff that inspired Rudyard Kipling’s tales, Kim and The Man Who Would Be King

The players of the Great Game were a motley crew of spies, soldiers and charlatans, running the gamut from bristling imperial archetypes to unhinged Anglican missionaries, and over the subsequent decades many of their tales have been told in books by authors such as Fitzroy MacLean, John Keay and Peter Hopkirk.

But there was one Great Gamer who always seemed to stand a little apart from the crowd, a gaunt and ill-omened young man by the name of George Hayward. Continue reading →

The Dawn of Forensics

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In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel, “A Study in Scarlett,” published in 1887, Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson “I have found a reagent which is precipitated by haemoglobin and nothing else.”

And so, writes DE Meredith, began the brilliant stories of Sherlock Homes which, almost single-handedly, introduced the British public to the idea that science could be used to solve even the most heinous of crimes.

Forensic science is now common parlance and despite a number of technical flaws along the way and the occasional, terrible miscarriage of justice, on the whole we believe in this science and because of programmes like “CSI” and “Waking the Dead” we are also hugely entertained by it.

But it wasn’t always this way.

Death and all his hideous crew

Here is a description of a nineteenth century morgue by the composer Hector Berlioz:

When I entered that fearful human charnel-house, littered with fragments of limbs, and saw the ghastly faces and cloven heads, the bloody cesspool in which we stood, with its reeking atmosphere, the swarms of sparrows fighting for scraps, and the rats in the corners gnawing bleeding vertebrae, such a feeling of horror possessed me that I leapt out of the window, and fled home as though Death and all his hideous crew were at my heels. It was twenty-four hours before I recovered from the shock of this first impression, utterly refusing to hear that words anatomy, dissection, or medicine, and firmly resolved to die rather than enter the career which had been forced upon me.

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Mary Seacole – a summary

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This is how the story goes… Mary Seacole was born Mary Jane Grant in 1805, in Kingston, Jamaica to a Jamaican mother and a Scottish soldier: ‘I have good Scots blood coursing through my veins,’ as she wrote on page one of her memoir. Her mother, a freed black woman, kept a home, or a boarding house, for wounded soldiers (many of them British soldiers suffering from yellow fever) and installed in Mary a love of nursing and medicine.

Mary SeacoleA keen traveller, the young Mary journeyed widely with her parents, including two trips to Britain, expanding her medical knowledge.

In 1836, she married Edwin Horatio Seacole, a former guest at her mother’s boarding house. Edwin Seacole was believed, without substance, to have been either an illegitimate offspring of Lord Nelson and his mistress, Lady Hamilton, or Nelson’s godson. A sickly man, he died eight years later in 1844. Despite several offers, Mary never married again. As a couple, the Seacoles had maintained the boarding house established by Mary’s mother and, as a widow, Mary Seacole’s work intensified in 1850 when a cholera epidemic struck Jamaica, killing over 30,000 inhabitants.

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Death of Prince Albert

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Prince AlbertThe light is subdued in the Blue Room. He lies in his bed, plumped up with pillows. His breath is slow and laboured, his skin terribly white, his hair stuck down by sweat. Kneeling on the floor, trembling, his wife – the queen. Holding his limp hand, she knows he is dying. Beside her, five of her children, their faces pinched with fear. Standing awkwardly, near by, ladies in waiting, equerries, doctors, a minister or two. But she has eyes only for her darling prince. The time is almost eleven in the evening. As he slips away, she mutters, ‘Oh, this is death, I know it.’ On his death, the queen cries forth a scream that tears down the walls of Windsor.

On the 14 December 1861, Albert, the Prince Consort, died. He was only 42. His unexpected death plunged Queen Victoria into grief so overwhelming that it endured for the rest of her life. Her pain was shared by the nation in an outpouring of grief that would not be seen again until the death, 136 years later, of Princess Diana. But after a while, public and politicians alike began to ask whether the Queen’s period of mourning would ever end?

Prince Albert and Princess Victoria meet

The 16-year-old Princess was immediately smitten – on meeting Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha for the first time, she confided in her diary that her German cousin was ‘extremely good looking’. It was 18 May 1836. They would not meet again for another 3½ years by which time, October 1839, Victoria had become queen. This time, her praise went even further – ‘It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert – who is beautiful’. Albert had the teenage queen’s heart ‘quite going’.

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Alexander Burnes – hacked to death in Afghanistan

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‘British diplomat hacked to death in Afghanistan’ – it would make a shocking headline. Yet on 2 November 1841, this is exactly what happened.

Britain was entrenched in Afghanistan, much as it is today, but the situation was seemingly stable. The British had just defeated the Afghans in the First Anglo-Afghan War, ousted a ruler they considered anti-British and replaced him with one more compliant to their needs. All was well. But on 2 November 1841, a mob of Afghans murdered the British political envoy living in Kabul, Sir Alexander Burnes. It was the start of an ignominious end to Britain’s foray in Afghanistan.

The Dandy Scot

Alexander Burnes, born in Montrose on 16 May 1805, was the epitome of a nineteenth century adventurer cum dandy – dashing, intelligent and courageous.

In 1831, the British government in Delhi ordered a survey of the Indus River, unchartered since the time of Alexander the Great. The man they entrusted this mission to was Alexander Burnes. A journey of over 1,000 miles, Burnes, a natural linguist, charmed the usually antagonistic tribal leaders he came upon, and eventually reached Lahore, his reputation greatly enhanced.

His next adventure took him to Afghanistan, dressed as a native having discarded, in his words, ‘the useless paraphernalia of civilization; we threw away all our European clothes, and adopted, without reserve, the costume of the Asiatic… groaning under ponderous turbans.’

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Netley: Queen Victoria’s Great Hospital

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It was in 1856 that construction began on a purpose-built hospital for injured British soldiers. Opened on 11 March 1863, the Royal Victoria Military Hospital at Netley, Southampton, was the largest of its kind in the world. Although the hospital was demolished in 1966, the chapel (pictured) - the only remaining build of the Netley site – stands as a reminder of Britain’s great military past and the enduring legacy of Queen Victoria.

Origins of Netley Hospital

The origins of Netley Hospital lay in the Crimean War (1854-1856), more specifically, the condition of the British military. When reports first hit the British press that nine in ten casualties were dying from disease, rather than wounds, a widespread feeling of outrage swept the nation. In a royal visit to Fort Pitt at Chatham, Queen Victoria witnessed first-hand the inadequate provisions made for her wounded soldiers. Furthermore, in a meeting with Florence Nightingale at Balmoral Castle in 1856, the Queen was deeply affected by stories of the hardships suffered by her soldiers in the Crimea. A brand new, purpose-built military hospital was, Queen Victoria stated, the only way to right this unacceptable wrong.

It was the Queen’s Surgeon, James Clark, who first suggested Netley as a possible site for the new hospital. Since the Middle Ages, Netley had been used as a mustering place, training ground and encampment for British troops so it already had a strong military association. A survey was then carried out by Captain Laffan of the War Department, and confirmed the site’s suitability. Five fields of the 109 acre site were purchased from Thomas Chamberlayne, the owner, for £15,000 in January, 1856, and, four months later, Victoria and Albert visited Netley to lay the foundation stone.

Although the foundations were now in place, a bitter conflict ensued over the design of the new hospital. When shown the plans for Netley by Lord Panmure, Secretary of State for War, Florence Nightingale (pictured) was outraged at what she saw. Small, cramped wards with few windows and quarter-mile-long corridors raised serious concerns about ventilation and the spread of infection. Nightingale immediately lobbied the Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister, to halt building work until its design had been resolved. Successfully persuaded by Nightingale, Palmerston instructed Lord Panmure to down tools at Netley but his attempt was in vain and construction on the hospital continued unabated.

Netley Hospital Opens

By 1859 building at Netley was complete. This impressive site, costing £350,000, contained a reservoir, three wells, swimming pool, gasworks, stables, 138 wards and 1,000 beds. In addition, a chapel, school, married quarters, prison cells and a cemetery transformed Netley from a mere hospital to a community. In March 1859, the three existing general hospitals at Dublin, Cork and Woolwich were closed down while soldiers receiving treatment were transported to the new hospital.

Netley was more than just a treatment facility. Aside from numerous research labs for the study of tropical diseases, Netley was also home to the Army Medical School and the Army Nursing Service, and acted as a medical training centre for doctors. Queen Victoria’s visit to the hospital in 1863, her first public appearance since Albert’s death, emphasised both her attachment to Netley and its wider national importance. Victoria would make a further 22 visits to Netley throughout the remainder of her reign.

Netley and the World Wars

During World War One, Netley’s significance and importance grew. Aside from treating more than 50,000 sick and injured soldiers, the Red Cross built a series of hutted hospitals behind the main hospital, doubling its total capacity. (A dedicated train-line, built in 1900, enabled ambulance crews  to easily transport wounded soldiers from Southampton Docks to the doors of Netley hospital). In 1944, Netley was taken over by the United States and successfully treated 68,000 soldiers during the remainder of World War Two.

The End of Netley Hospital

In 1958 the government deemed Netley too expensive to maintain. When diggers and cranes moved in to demolish the site in 1966, workers retrieved a metal casket buried below the granite foundation block laid by Queen Victoria. This time capsule contained coins and a copy of The Times from Victoria’s reign, plans of the hospital and an early Victoria Cross. The items were then preserved and put on display at the Royal Army Medical Corps museum in Aldershot. Since 1980 the site has been opened up to public recreation by Hampshire County Council.

Sadly, the chapel is all that remains of Queen Victoria’s great military hospital but this beautiful building gives you an idea of what once was.

To find out more, visit the Royal Victoria Country Park website.

Kaye Jones

Kaye is author of three History In An Hour titles: 1066: History In An Hour, Dickens: History In An Hour and The Medieval Anarchy: History In An Hour