There are many aspects of Straits-Chinese or “Peranakan” culture which have justly survived to modern times. The clothing, the footwear, the food, the ‘kueh’, the beautiful historic architecture, the silverware, jewelry, and furniture…but one area which is, perhaps, less-represented, is the type of ceramics used by the Peranakan – a style which became known as “nyonyaware”.
Nyonyaware ceramics were heavily used by the Peranakan or “baba-nyonya” – and these brightly painted, intricately decorated pieces of porcelain were to be found in almost every Peranakan home up and down the Malay Peninsula, in Singapore, and Indonesia. Today, they are rare, beautiful, and highly-collected antiques.
What is ‘Nyonyaware’?
‘Nyonyaware’ is the name given to the brightly-painted, pastel-coloured pieces of porcelain or ceramic-wares which were used by the Baba-Nyonya or Peranakan/Straits-Born Chinese in the 1800s and early 1900s. They were a major part of the culture, and most Peranakan households had at least some of these pieces in their home for use, or decoration.
They’re identified by their colour palette of soft greens, pinks, blues, yellows and occasionally darker colours like vermilion-red or a darker, royal blue, and decorative motifs taken from Chinese symbolism and mythology. Peranakan nyonyaware often had floral motifs on them, in particular – peony-flowers, and mythical Chinese animals, such as foo-dogs, and especially – phoenixes. Peonies and phoenixes were representative of Longevity (the immortal phoenix, king of birds) and Wealth (the bright and vibrant peony-flower), which made them popular decorative elements.
Despite their popular name, ‘nyonyaware’ porcelain was not manufactured in the Straits Settlements or the Dutch East Indies where the Peranakan lived. Instead, it was manufactured in China – a type of hard-paste, glazed porcelain which held little interest to the mainland Chinese. At the time, it was cheap exportware, produced for the foreign market, but the Peranakan-Chinese took a shine to this bright, overly-decorated style of ceramics, which matched their own sense of design and decoration, and started importing vast amounts of them to Southeast Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Pieces of Peranakan Nyonyaware
Peranakan nyonyaware ran the whole gamut of porcelain goods, from bowls to plates, condiment-dishes to serving platters, cups, candlesticks, teapots, tea-trays, spoons, decorative bowls and jars, pots and lidded vessels. From kamcheng to Kat Mau, from sauce-dishes to tea-services, and even stacked ceramic serving-containers (“tingkat mengkuk”, in Malay). Everything from the smallest spoon or saucer, to an entire porcelain dinner-service, with matching plates, bowls, side-dishes and serving-plates, could all be found in the distinctively bright and heavily-decorated Peranakan style.
Given this apparent abundance, one might assume that Peranakan-wares are easy to find, and cheap to collect. However, this is, for the most part, sadly not the case.
Much was destroyed or thrown out or simply lost during the Second World War, or else disposed-of, or sold-off by baba-nyonya families who no-longer had the space (or inclination) to store, or use, their ancestors’ extensive porcelain collections. Other pieces were simply just broken, chipped, damaged and disposed of.
These days, they’re valuable antiques, for display, or occasional-use, only, but 150 years ago, they were seen as nothing more than everyday, daily-use pieces of porcelain, of no more consequence or importance than the cereal bowl you might’ve used to eat breakfast from this morning. They were cheap to import, and cheap to buy, and as such, were not always treated with the greatest care. Only the fanciest, largest, or most delicate wares were housed and handled with any level of respect.
Because of this, nyonyaware is now relatively rare, and difficult to find. Pieces often cost hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, even for something relatively small. People who already own nyonyaware either inherited it from their ancestors (I have other Peranakan friends who have substantial collections of nyonyaware which were attained in this way – if they’re reading this – they know who they are!), or else, have deep, deep, DEEP pockets to purchase them on the Asian antiques market. What were once seen as frivolous, colourful, throwaway objects are now highly prized collectibles.
A Pair of Nyonyaware Bowls
Tracking down pieces of nyonyaware in good condition is not easy, especially for reasonable prices. As mentioned, a lot of them were damaged, lost, stolen, broken, or simply worn out through regular use – remember that they were not considered especially valuable pieces, and were cheap, when new – they were exportware, after all, from China.
That said, you can occasionally find nice pieces for sale at affordable prices, and over the years, I’ve managed to accumulate a small collection.
The most recent pieces I found are the subject of this post.
I found these two dishes online, originally one, and then the other – with both pieces identified by their sellers as Peranakan – and which certainly look like it. They match the accepted colour-palette of nyonyaware, and the usual types of decorations – yellow, pink, green, with peonies and phoenixes (yes, those creatures are phoenixes, not dragons!). They’re also of advanced age, as you can see from the wear and nibbling on the edges and sides.
The angled, octagonal shape, with the base and curved sides really give the bowls extra style and character – another thing which the Peranakan of old, enjoyed. Perankan-style trays platters from the same era, as well as bowls, and plates, often had decorative, curved edges, or elaborate scalloping, to add extra flair to a piece. Same goes for items such as stacking containers, which were also of a similar octagonal or hexagonal design.
While most Peranakan dishes were decorated inside, as well as out, this was not always the case, and examples with simple, single-colour glazes – such as the green shown here – were also common. In fact, green (and also white) were popular interior glaze colours.
The bowls are medium-sized, rectangular (or more specifically, octagonal), about 6.5 x 5.25 inches, and about 3 inches high. Overall, they’re in amazing condition, given their age. There is a bit of paint-loss and minor nibbling chips, which are the result of either manufacture (one bowl has a manufacture-induced crack on the base from the firing process), or just simply from old age and regular use.
Given that they’re about 130 years old, give-or-take, and being porcelain – naturally very fragile – they’ve survived remarkably intact, without anything more than light surface-wear.
Dishes like these were handpainted, a delicate and fiddly process, which resulted in the somewhat folk-arty appearance of the decorations, which was another distinctive feature of Peranakan porcelain. As mentioned, they were never designed to be expensive, and were used as everyday crockery when new, and the level of detail reflects that.
Yellow as a background colour is also a bit more unusual for Peranakan pieces. While it was certainly used, and there are plenty of examples of yellow-ground nyonyaware dishes, this is the first time I’ve owned pieces which features it so prominently. Pink, green, and pale blue tend to be a bit more common and popular.
The fact that they’re a pair, and so wonderfully reunited, is pretty amazing for any number of reasons, but they were clearly made to the same shape, style and decorations, and were obviously meant to go together as a set, which I’m glad to have.
Of course, as hand-drawn, handpainted items, they’ll never match fully-identically, unlike something which was, for example, transfer-printed, but the intent for them to match is certainly there – and adds to their folksy charm.
Modern Nyonyaware
Authentic nyonyaware porcelain dates from the 1800s through to the first half of the 20th century, at which point civil, political and military unrest in China, and Asia in-general, made it impossible to keep producing these pieces to sell them to the Peranakan market in Southeast Asia. Changing social, cultural and economic statuses eventually caused the market to dry up, and for decades, no new nyonyware pieces were being produced.
In the 21st century, with attempted revivals of Peranakan culture, crafts, and customs, nyonyaware is also on the rise again. It’s now possible to purchase reproductions of antique nyonyaware pieces, although these ones can be as (or even more) expensive as their antique counterparts, and can still be tricky to find, but are nonetheless beautiful and fascinating pieces.
The S.S. Naronic, a White Star Line steamship, leaves Liverpool, UK, bound for New York City.
The Naronic is a small ship – only 6,594GRT, and with a top speed of just 13kt.
The Naronic is no speed-demon, no size-queen, and is no comparison with the White Star’s larger, grander oceanic greyhounds – the enormous superliners of the late Victorian era.
She is a cargo ship. Specifically, she’s a livestock carrier, designed to ship British livestock to the United States. This is why she is prefixed “S.S.” (“Steamship”), and not “R.M.S.” (“Royal Mail Steamer”), as she carried no mail from either the USPS, or the Royal Mail service.
The S.S. Naronic in 1892
Aboard the Naronic are 74 persons: Fifty crew, and two dozen passengers – mostly livestock men, horsemen, and a handful of fare-paying travelers who occupy the few cheap passenger-cabins available on board.
The ship sails past the southern coast of Ireland and is never seen again.
To this day, nobody knows what happened to the S.S. Naronic, its crew, its cargo, or its livestock.
If messages-in-bottles are to be believed, the ship struck an iceberg on the 19th while sailing through heavy, snowing seas in the middle of the night, and sank with all hands. The crews of other ships passing through the area where it’s believed the Naronic likely sank, reported seeing icebergs when they were questioned at the official inquiry into the Naronic’s loss.
In the 1890s, ships did not carry wireless telegraph mechanisms on board. The new-age radio systems which ships like the Titanic, Olympic and Majestic carried would not be commercially available until 1898 at the earliest. As a result, ship-to-ship distress messages could not be sent, except by distress rockets or flares shot into the air, in the hopes that some passing ship might see them, and render aid. This means that whatever the crew of the Naronic faced between Liverpool and New York – they faced it alone and helpless, likely in the middle of the night, and in freezing temperatures and heavy seas.
Two lifeboats from the Naronic were discovered floating at sea by passing ships, but no other wreckage, nor any dead bodies, have ever been found. The fate of the Naronic, and those aboard her, are a complete mystery, which will likely never be solved.
In developed nations in the 21st century, we expect children to have a pleasant fun-filled, loving childhood, to go to school, to learn, develop and blossom, to be safe and carefree, and to enjoy life, build memories, skills and experiences.
We’re so used to this idea of childhood that it’s easy to forget that as recently as two or three generations ago, children having to work for a living, to earn money at a job to support themselves or their families, was not only common, but legal – something which certainly isn’t true, or encouraged in the modern world.
In this posting, we’ll be exploring the wide variety of jobs that children have done throughout history (Ah! See that? That’s why this blog has the title that it does!), and what happened to make these jobs obsolete or illegal.
These jobs will not be in any particular order, and can come from any period of history. Let us begin!
Link Boys
It’s after sundown. The streets are cold and damp and windy, and you need to head home after a long night out at the theater, or at your club, or perhaps you spent the evening at a tavern or restaurant with friends. Either way, it’s time that you made your uncertain way back to your own front door.
In the dark.
With nothing to light your way.
No candles, no oil lamps, no streetlamps, no moon…how on earth are you going to make it even six feet without tripping over something?
Enter the link boy.
A link boy and his customer
From the Middle Ages, right into the early 19th century, streetlamps were few and far between…if they existed at all…and after sunset, it was extremely common for streets to be plunged into near complete-darkness. Traveling through town at night was a perilous business. You could be run over by a horse and carriage, you could be mugged, raped, stabbed, or even murdered! It was in this environment that young boys carrying flaming torches or flambeaus, could earn a living by lighting streets and pathways, walking alongside their customers to light their ways home in the dark. They became known as “link boys”, after the “links” (flaming torches) which they carried.
Being a link boy was a cold, dangerous, thankless job. You spent all night outside, sometimes in miserable weather, you survived on tips, and you ran the constant risk of being assaulted, raped or molested. Despite this, link boys could earn a decent wage, if they worked in a busy part of town. They were nicknamed “Moon Cursers” because on nights when there was strong starlight or a full moon, their services were less likely to be required, and so they would earn less money.
Link boys died out in the later 1800s, when oil (and later, gas)-fired streetlamps became commonplace.
Climbing Boys
These days, chimney-sweeping is a highly romanticised job. It’s considered good luck for a bride to spot, meet, shake hands, or even be kissed by a chimney-sweep on their wedding day (and some sweeping companies even hire themselves out for this purpose!), but back in the 18th and 19th centuries, being a chimney-sweep was one of the most dangerous, and demonised occupations out there, and one of the most notorious child labouring jobs of all time was that of climbing boy.
Climbing boys were child apprentices of adult chimney-sweeps, purchased from workhouses, or adopted from poor families, and raised to be the master sweep’s assistant.
These child chimney-sweeps led miserable, dangerous, and tragically short lives. Although laws were supposed to limit the age at which a boy could be hired for this sort of work, it wasn’t uncommon for children as young as six, five, or even four years old, to be used in this way.
Climbing boys had the unenviable task of scrambling up inside a fireplace, and climbing up into the flue, with a brush in one hand, to scrape, brush and knock down all the soot and ash which had caked the interior of the chimney. The ash and soot was then collected by the sweep, bagged up, and carried out of the house.
Sweeps didn’t actually charge for their services – they went around town offering to sweep chimneys for free. The money they made was from selling-on the ash, dust and other waste-products generated by millions of fireplaces across big cities such as London, Paris, and New York to farmers, gardeners and brick-makers.
Climbing boys worked in phenomenally cramped, dusty, dangerous and claustrophobic conditions. They suffered from skin-rashes, breathing conditions, burns, infections, falls, and the most feared of all – being trapped inside a chimney and suffocating to death. If a child did get trapped inside – well – that was it. There was almost no way of getting the boy out, short of smashing the wall apart with axes and sledgehammers. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle observed in one of his famous Sherlock Holmes stories:
“The wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney”.
– Dr. Watson, “The Adventure of the Five Orange Pips”
To try and protect themselves from this terrifying fate, climbing boys did everything possible to reduce their chances of being trapped inside chimneys. Clothes were a particularly dangerous hazard. They could tear, they could snag, they could get caught on rough brickwork and they could cause a boy to be irretrievably wedged inside a chimney-flue. To try and get around these risks it was common practice for climbing boys to work sans-clothing. That’s right – they worked butt-naked, with nothing to cover them except a thick layer of soot once they were done.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, climbing boys were often horribly abused. Kids who couldn’t climb or work fast enough were often punished by their masters. If a boy couldn’t climb up the chimney fast enough to sweep down all the soot, then the master sweep might start a fire in the grate…yes, in the fireplace that was having its chimney being cleaned…right now…and the heat of the fire and the smoke would ‘encourage’ the boy to climb faster, and work harder.
Ever heard of the expression of “lighting a fire under your ass” to get someone to work faster?
Now you know where it comes from.
If that wasn’t bad enough, climbing boys even had to climb up chimneys which were…wait for it…on fire! An uncleaned chimney was a fire-hazard because the cinders and sparks going up the chimney could ignite the creosote and soot that was stuck to the insides of the flue. This would start a fire in a part of the chimney where no fire was ever supposed to be. The extreme heat could set the roof on fire, and eventually burn down the whole building!
Putting out these chimney-fires with a wet towel or blanket was another terrifying duty of climbing boys.
The conditions for child chimney-sweeps were so dangerous that over a period of nearly 100 years, between 1788-1875, at least FIVE acts were passed through the British Houses of Parliament to try and outlaw the practice, but every time a new law was introduced…it was simply ignored! As was observed in Charles Dickens’ famous novel ‘Oliver Twist’:
“Young boys have been smothered in chimneys before now!”
– Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens.
One of those young boys was George Brewster, who got trapped inside a chimney in a ward at Fulbourn Mental Hospital. His screaming could be heard all over the hospital and despite attempts to get him out (they smashed the wall open with sledgehammers to get him free) he died shortly after. This was the last straw. His master sweep was convicted of manslaughter, and a law was finally passed to make the act of sending people up chimneys illegal.
Powder Monkeys
The 1700s and 1800s was the heyday of sailing warships. This was the time when Britannia really did rule the waves. The British Royal Navy was the most powerful entity in the world, taking on the French, the Dutch, the Spanish and the Americans in wars that stretched across Europe and the world. Cannonballs and grapeshot, canisters and chains were fired from the muzzles of English guns, obliterating their enemies and destroying their ships!
British gun-crews were trained brutally hard, and were expected to be able to load and fire a cannon every ninety seconds! But all this speed, efficiency and fighting prowess relied not on sweat or muscle or timing…but on the shoulders of a little boy.
To fire a gun, you first need gunpowder. On a sailing warship, gunpowder was stored in the Magazine, a copper-lined room at the bottom of the ship below the waterline. To get the powder (stored in casks and bags) from the magazine to the gun-decks required dozens of children running back and forth between the magazine and the gun-deck with their little powder-flasks, carrying charges of gunpowder.
Their constant scurrying and running around earned these boys the nickname of “powder monkeys”, and it was their job to be as efficient as possible when it came to getting powder from the magazine up to the guns. When the ship wasn’t fighting, the boys served as cabin-boys or stewards’ mates, or servants to senior officers, but the moment the call to action was announced, they were expected to drop everything and run for the magazine. Powder monkeys risked being blown up, maimed, being injured and having their limbs amputated, or else killed outright, but they worked knowing that if their actions led to the enemy ship being captured or put out of action – they could win a share of the prize-money!
While their job could be extremely dangerous, powder monkeys were vital to the running of a fighting frigate, so they were often well cared-for, well-fed, and even taught their lessons by a senior officer who would’ve doubled as a schoolmaster when aboard ship. The chance of making their fortunes at sea was what encouraged many of them to sign on. If they were lucky enough to work for a skilled and successful captain, their share in the prize-money could set them up for life, and they could rise through the ranks and become a captain themselves one day.
Midshipmen
Powder-monkeys and cabin-boys weren’t the only kids to be found aboard warshpis in the days of fighting sail – oh no! Some of the youngest kids around actually held officer rank!
In the Royal Navy in the late 1700s and early 1800s, if you wanted to become a captain and commander, you had to climb the slippery slope of officer training and pass the tests to prove that you had the smarts and the know-how to be able to manage your own ship. And this all started as a Midshipman at the wizened age of…twelve. In fact, it was so common for midshipmen to be teenaged or even pre-teen boys, that they were nicknamed “Snotties” by the crew!
A midshipman was a junior or trainee-officer aboard a fighting frigate or Man o’ War sailing ship. Their jobs included passing orders between other officers (such as the captain and his lieutenants), directing sailors, or even ordering the firing of the cannons and controlling their gun-crews during battle. And they were expected to do all this starting at the age of twelve!
By the late 1700s and early 1800s, midshipman training lasted for three years, and to be eligible to stand for examinations for the next rank up (Lieutenant) those same midshipmen had to have had at least six years’ experience at sea. Given that the average age of midshipmen was between 10-13 when they started, that meant that they could become a lieutenant before they reached their 21st birthdays!
As almost all midshipmen started as children or young teens, you might wonder how they ever ended up on ship in the first place? Most midshipmen came from families with money, status, or with a naval or military background. Usually, their fathers, uncles, older brothers, or cousins, also served in the Navy, and put in a good word with their commanding officer that here was a likely lad who desired a life at sea! This was how Horatio Nelson started at sea in 1771, when, at the age of twelve, he began life as an ordinary seaman aboard the HMS Raisonnable, under the command of Captain Maurice Suckling!…who also happened to be young Horatio’s uncle.
So what happened to the boy-officers of the Royal Navy?
Well, the practice was eventually phased out. In the early Victorian era, boys had to be at least 12 years old to sign up as a midshipman. By the middle of the century it was 14. By the 1940s it was 16, and by the 1950s, a midshipman had to be at least 18, and be a highschool graduate.
Crossing Sweepers
So far, we’ve covered jobs which were dangerous, wet, hot, dirty and explosive. Now, we’re going to cover a job that – by comparison – was a bit of a cakewalk!
Before the 20th century, when automobiles started to take over, the only way for people to travel around town was by horse and carriage. Carts, carriages, coaches, broughams, barouches, Clarences, Hansom cabs, fire-wagons, paddy-wagons and countless other horse-drawn vehicles turned the city streets of the world into an open sewer, with dust, mud, straw, horse-dung and god knows what else, all over the streets. To cross the street without getting your shoes, breeches, trousers, overcoats or long dresses muddied up was an expedition in and of itself!
To assist these pedestrians – up sprang the crossing-boy!
Although this job could be done by almost anybody, it was most commonly associated with young boys, and the job is exactly what it sounds like – sweeping or shoveling a path through the street-muck to allow people to cross the road without muddying up their clothes. Looking at modern streets, you might wonder if there was ever any call for this – but in Victorian London (and in other major cities) there were so many people employed in this task (usually as freelancers) that some people saw them as a public nuisance!
Vagrancy and begging laws dictated that you could not ask for payment as a crossing-sweeper, but it was still common practice, and basic decency, to give the crossing-sweeper a tip for his efforts. If a sweeper had loads of customers, he could earn himself quite a tidy sum for a day’s effort in keeping the streets clean. Boys who worked in particularly busy parts of town could obviously earn more, and the job was not dangerous, or even that unpleasant. A bit smelly perhaps, but so long as you could walk, talk, and were able-bodied, just about anybody could do this job.
The job was not without its perils – you could get run over by an out-of-control carriage, you could freeze in winter if you had to shovel or sweep snow off the streets, or you could catch some horrible bout of influenza from being out in all weathers, but at least it was out in the open air, and away from any serious dangers.
Crossing-sweepers were demonised as pickpockets, beggars, vagrants and street-urchins. However, just as they had many people pouring scorn upon them, the humble crossing-sweepers also had a lot of supporters. Many members of the walking public were only too eager to praise them for their work, their industriousness and their eagerness to serve, and were only too happy to give a young lad their spare change as a tip for services rendered.
The Printer’s Devil
A printer’s ‘Devil’, as he was called, was a young boy or apprentice (typically seven or eight years old) who worked for a master printer. The printing devil’s job involved doing all kinds of menial and easy tasks around the print-shop – sweeping, dusting, cleaning, but also cleaning the print-type, lifting the printed pages off the press, and maintaining the ink-balls (the padded, leather paddles used to press fresh ink onto the movable-type between each operation of the printing press).
This last job required the devil to remove the old, worn-out or cracked leather from the ink balls, and to replace it with fresh leather…which had been treated in urine to soften it!
Eventually, the devil would learn how to do other things like how to apply ink to the type, and how to operate the press. As children’s jobs go, it wasn’t particularly demanding, and could come with a free education.
Pageboy
The occupation of page has existed literally for centuries. The original meaning of a ‘page’ or a pageboy, was of an apprentice knight – as in a knight-in-shining-armour kind of knight. A page was a boy of about seven or eight years old who was destined to one day, become a knight himself. Being a page meant serving an actual knight, and learning the tools of the trade – such as how to ride a horse, how to swing a sword, how to joust, how to deflect, block or parry an attack with a sword or shield, and how to look after plate-armour, such as repairing it, cleaning it and polishing it. It was one of the main jobs of pageboys to ensure that their masters were literally knights in shining armour.
As the age of knights and horses, of shields, plate-armour and heraldry started to die away, the term ‘pageboy’ became synonymous with that of a junior servant-boy. A page typically served a large institution of some kind, such as a grand manor house or townhouse, an ocean-liner, a luxury hotel, a grand railway station, or a fancy gentleman’s club. Their hours might be long, but the work was generally light. It involved things like fetching, carrying, running errands, delivering newspapers and parcels, delivering the mail, making purchases for hotel-guests, and delivering notes. The main difficulty in their job was just walking. Lots, and lots, and lots of walking!
Pageboys were a bit of a status-symbol in their own way – only the largest and wealthiest of households or public institutions had them, and usually more than one. They had their own uniforms and hours of work, and the position lasted well into the 20th century. Some places today (such as hotels) still have the position of pageboy, although the position is now given to older males in their teens or early-adult years.
Newsboys
“Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Newsboy Strike Cripples Millionaires!”
In the 1800s, almost the only way to get reliable news of any kind was to go out and buy a newspaper. Printed in the morning, afternoon and evening, newspapers were sold in their trillions all over the world. Once read, newspapers were used for packing, padding, wrapping, lighting fires and even to serve fish and chips!…until they realised that the grease in fish and chips caused the ink to run in the newspaper…and that newspaper ink contained lead.
Uh…whoops.
But questionable fish and chips aside, newspapers were vital for disseminating information, and then, as now, big media moguls guarded their news-networks jealously.
A major part of these networks fell upon the shoulders of little boys between the ages of seven to twelve, whose job it was to flog the papers printed by these moguls every single day of the week, for as long as they possibly could.
These were the newsboys, or “newsies” as they were also called.
Probably the most famous newsboy in history, Edward Parfett is eternally remembered as the youth standing on the street-corner holding the iconic sign: “TITANIC DISASTER – GREAT LOSS OF LIFE”
Newsboys worked phenomenally long hours. While morning papers were usually delivered door-to-door, afternoon and evening editions were sold on the streets by newsboys – typically as an after-school job. Newsstands, news-agencies and such didn’t really exist back then, and it was easier to have thousands of newsboys selling papers on the street than it was to try and run around town all day, looking for places that would sell your papers for you.
The boys were expected to buy their bundles of newspapers – 100 papers in a bundle – at 50c each (or 1/2-cent a newspaper), and then sell them for at least 1c each. If 1/2-a-cent profit on every newspaper doesn’t sound like much…well…it wasn’t.
Newsboys were a common sight around town, calling out the headlines, waving their papers around, and doing anything to get a sale, even jumping on and off streetcars to try and flog their papers to the passengers. Newsboys worked long, hard hours – emphasis on long – from three or four o’clock until past midnight in some cases!
Like a lot of child-labourers, the newsboys were horribly exploited by their employers, and in 1899, this all came to a head…because of a war.
The Spanish-American War of 1898 caused a spike in newspaper readership, as wars are want to do, and this caused newspaper companies to crank up the prices that newsboys paid for their bundles of papers – not 50c a hundred anymore – oh no – now they would pay the princely sum of…60c a hundred!
Newsboys objected to this exploitation, and once the Spanish-American War was over, the majority of newspapers went back to the pre-war price of 50c per-hundred newspapers.
The majority. But the minority did not.
The Minority being the papers run by William Randolph Hearst, and Joseph Pulitzer, of Pulitzer-Prize fame. Their newspapers, the New York Journal and New York World, continued being sold to newsboys at 60c a hundred, to be sold at just one cent each! If this wasn’t bad enough, any papers they didn’t sell at the end of the day would be taken out of the newsboys’ wages!…Meaning that the pittances that they could earn were being scooped up by the fat cats. The newsboys, already hacked-off about the prices, and who were mostly homeless or from struggling, working-class families, now had to worry about what would happen if they couldn’t sell all their papers!
On top of this, Manhattan newsboys discovered in July, 1899, that a delivery-driver who distributed the paper-bundles that they had to buy for their jobs, was shortchanging the boys by giving them underweight newspaper-bundles. This meant that the newsboys had to pay more money for less papers to sell for lower prices for less profit! Enraged, the newsboys had finally had enough, and went on strike!
Not one or two or half a dozen. Hundreds of them! Thousands of them! The city of New York went into a media blackout the likes of which it had never seen before.
The Striking New York Newsboys of 1899
Between the 20th of July until the 2nd of August of 1899, almost all the newsboys in New York refused to sell so much as a roll of toilet-paper! While they started out by simply protesting unfair working practices, the little newsboys had no idea just how much power they really had: without them, neither Hearst, nor Pulitzer were able to get their papers out to their reading public.
The effect of the newsboy strike was far-reaching, and surprisingly immediate! Readership of the New York Journal and The World plummeted by as much as 65% as people purchased papers from other news-sources. Apart from the loss of physical newspaper sales, Hearst and Pulitzer were also hurting from the steep drop in advertising revenue. When companies and businesses realised that the fees they’d paid were for ads that went into papers that weren’t being sold – well – they stopped paying their advertising fees, causing even more money to stop coming in! Through the simple act of refusing to sell newspapers, the newsies had crippled two of the most powerful men in the country. They had the media moguls by the balls, and the kids were determined to hold on for dear life!
To get back at the media fat-cats who were ripping them off, the newsboys sold their labour to other newspaper companies which provided their papers at more reasonable wholesale prices, and which allowed the newsboys to print their own articles highlighting their struggle. New Yorkers were outraged at the actions of two media moguls bullying a crowd of homeless street-kids, and began boycotting the NY World and NY Journal, siding with the newsboys. The boys and their older teenaged colleagues formed a newsboys’ union, and held rallies and speeches demanding change.
The NYPD were powerless to intervene because, in a further act of petty cunning, the newsboys had planned their strike to coincide with the more publicised New York Streetcar Strike of 1899. Unable to handle the striking trolley-drivers, and round up thousands of conniving kids who were up to no good, the police left the boys alone while they tried to do battle with the much more formidable challenge of the streetcar-drivers. When scab-workers tried to pitch in and sell the newspapers that the boys refused to touch – the newsboys fought back!
As in they literally FOUGHT back – they trashed delivery-wagons, stole newspapers, threw bundles of newspapers into the rivers, soaked them with buckets of water to make them unreadable and tore them to shreds in the streets!
And remember that these were newsboys! Not teenagers, not college students – they were KIDS! – While some were teenagers, the vast majority of them weren’t more than twelve years old!
Their actions were so destructive that in the end, the media moguls had no choice. It was either agree to the demands of the newsboys and mounting public pressure, or else be forever known as the heartless tyrants who drove thousands of children to violence and protesting…over a paltry ten cents. The fact that the strike was over in just under two weeks is proof of just how effective it was, and of how badly the news-publishers relied on the boys to get the news out.
In the end, Pulitzer and Hearst, two of the richest men in America at the time, were forced to start labour-negotiations in an effort to save both their companies…and their reputations …with a bunch of kids!
And the kids won, too.
After two weeks of strike-action, the following resolutions took effect: Newspaper-bundles would remain at 60c a hundred. This was unacceptable, but in a compromise, Hearst and Pulitzer agreed that any papers which remained unsold at the end of each day would be purchased back from the boys by the publishers at retail-price. This way, the boys would no longer be out of pocket and going into debt. It also meant that they no longer had to stay up to 2:00am trying to flog papers that nobody wanted anymore, for fear of losing out on their earnings. The newsboys agreed, and the strike ended on the 2nd of August, 1899.
Newsboys continued selling papers for decades afterwards, and for a long time, being a newsboy was a common occupation for youngsters, although they were free from the shady business-practices which their predecessors had fought so hard to overturn.
A traditional eight-panel tweed flat-cap…better known as a “newsboy” cap
Newsboys were such a common sight in the streets that they even had an article of clothing named after them: Those old-fashioned style six-and-eight-panel flat-caps with the semicircular brims with a button sewn into the middle of the top?
They’re called “newsboy” caps.
Closing Remarks
This has been a hell of a write-up! It was a lot of fun to write, and to research. There are more child-jobs that I’ll be covering in a future posting, but I’ll stop it here, for now.
Information for these jobs came from the Weird History website and YouTube Channel, the documentary film “The Children who Built Victorian Britain”, and the “Worst Jobs in History” series hosted by Sir Tony Robinson.
The night air is crisp, the seas are rolling, the ship is rocking as it ploughs through the waves, swaying back and forth, the muffled sloshing of the distant water sending you to sleep. To the casual observer, nothing is wrong, and nothing would be wrong, if not for a series of individually inconsequential events, which all conspired to create one of the greatest maritime disasters which few people today have ever heard of.
Everybody has heard of the sinking of the Titanic. If you’ve studied First-World-War history, then you’ll also be familiar with the sinking of the Lusitania, and maybe the Wilhelm Gustloff, if you’ve studied Second-World-War history. But how many people have ever heard of the sinking of a ship called the S.S. Atlantic?
To most people, the S.S. Atlantic sounds like the title of some cheesy 1970s B-movie disaster-film. The name just sounds so generic and bland and made-up-on-the-spot because somebody in charge of the creative processes for the movie couldn’t come up with anything more original! And yet, despite the rather uninteresting-sounding name, the story of the steamship Atlantic is probably more dramatic than any disaster-epic that Hollywood could’ve dreamed up back in the age of bell-bottoms, disco balls and loud, garish suits.
In this posting, we’ll be exploring the true story of the wreck of the S.S. Atlantic – when it happened, how it happened, and why.
What was the S.S. Atlantic?
Launched in 1870, and departing on its maiden voyage on the 8th of June, 1871, the SS Atlantic was the latest in a series of ships built by Harland & Wolff – shipbuilders – for a company owned and operated by a man named Thomas Ismay – the company? The White Star Shipping Line.
The Atlantic was meant to be the second ship in the new ‘Oceanic‘-class of steam-powered sailing ocean liners. The others being the Oceanic, the Baltic, and the Republic. These ships were designed to be the most modern and up-to-date ships used by White Star since the company’s purchase by the Ismay family back in the 1850s. Previous ships were all sailing cutters, which differed little from other sailing ships of the early 1800s. By the second half of the 19th century, however, sufficient advances had been made in the area of maritime steam engines that the Atlantic and her sisters were among the first in this new generation of steam-powered sailing ocean liners.
And yes – I said steam-powered sailing ocean liners.
While White Star had started experiments with steam-powered ships as far back as the 1860s, the fact of the matter was that the public had little faith in these new ships – hard to blame them when a steam explosion on board the SS Great Eastern back in the 1850s, had killed 6 people!
To try and reassure the public that these ships were reliable (or at least, that they wouldn’t be in any danger if they weren’t!), early steam-powered ocean liners were still fitted with a complement of masts, rigging and sails – in this way, if the coal ran out, or if the engines broke down in the middle of the ocean, the ship could still be powered by sails. That said, sails were only ever seen as a secondary propulsion option. Since companies were eager to embrace the easier and faster method of steam propulsion, they would only have been hoisted in the event of a real emergency.
The S.S. Atlantic under full steam and sail. You can see the White Star pennant (flag) flying from the mainmast in the middle of the ship
Along with steam engines, the S.S. Atlantic featured other new innovations. The creation of steamships had caused a big design-shift in how ships were laid out. In the past, ships were always steered from the back, with the helm (steering wheel) mounted on the poop-deck over the tiller and rudder. Because steamships had huge smokestacks in the way, positioning the steering wheel all the way at the back was just no longer practical – it just wasn’t possible to see where you were going, past all the smokestacks, and the smoke, and the rigging…you get the idea.
To stop mariners from sailing blind, the ships’ wheels were now positioned forward, in a new structure known as the wheelhouse, and the steering mechanism was connected to the rudder by a series of gears instead of ropes and pulleys as they had done in the past. In many cases, the wheelhouse was built into a larger structure around and behind it, encompassing officers’ quarters, navigational chart-rooms and meeting rooms known as the ship’s bridge.
The ‘bridge’ was a new design feature on steamships, and they dated all the way back to the earliest paddle-steamers (think about the riverboats that you see on the Mississippi). Initially, the ‘bridge’ was…quite literally…a bridge! A long, flat, railed structure that bridged the gap over the hull, from one side of the ship to the other. By standing on the bridge, the ship’s captain and his officers could see everything that was going on, without getting in the way of passengers on the main deck below. It also allowed them to move quickly from one side of the ship to the other to inspect paddle-wheels, or to watch out for dangers such as rocks, icebergs, and other ships.
A typical engine-order telegraph
Along with repositioning the steering wheel to make navigation easier, enclosing it and the officers’ quarters in a new bridge superstructure and wheelhouse, and replacing ropes and pulleys with more reliable geared steering mechanisms, the Atlantic and her sister-ships had another innovation: The engine-order telegraph!
Engine-order telegraphs were used to convey orders from the bridge down to the engine-room below, regarding the ship’s speed and direction. Orders were typically FULL AHEAD, HALF AHEAD, SLOW AHEAD, DEAD-SLOW AHEAD, STANDBY and STOP – with the same repeated for reverse (or ‘ASTERN’). Pulling the handles on the telegraph would strike a bell which could be heard down in the engine-room, alerting the engineers to the requested change in speed or direction. The engineers (who had identical telegraphs down below) responded to the orders from the bridge by pulling their own telegraph levers to the appropriate position, indicating that the orders had been received, and were being acted upon. This was indicated up on the bridge by the ringing of another bell, so that the officers on watch knew that the engine-order changes were imminent.
The Atlantic was large for the day – it could transport over 1,000 passengers, after all, spread across four decks. The ship boasted ten lifeboats, a steam power-plant capable of 600hp, and a top speed of just over 14kt (approx 27mph), which was just fast enough to ensure a weekly service between Europe and America.
Sailing on the S.S. Atlantic
The S.S. Atlantic had a very successful sailing career…right up until it didn’t…and crossed its namesake ocean, running the transatlantic route between Liverpool and New York several times without incident. The second half of the 1800s saw a huge rise in the number of passengers sailing between North America and Europe – principally Canada and the United States on one side, and Britain, France and Germany on the other. The rise of steamships in general meant that for the first time, it was possible to actually have a reliable service of ships between North America and Europe.
A steamship, traveling at a set rate of speed, could do the one thing that sailing ships never could: Arrive on time! Not being reliant on weather and wind-power, steamships and the companies that operated them, could do the one thing that sailing ship companies never could: Have an actual sailing schedule! For the first time in history, you could say with fair reliability, that you would leave Southampton, or Liverpool, or Cherbourg, on Friday, and arrive in New York or Boston, or Montreal, the following Friday – and that exactly one week after arriving, you could sail home again if you wished, because exactly a week after you arrived, another ship would have arrived from Europe to take you home again!
Because of this, companies like White Star were desperate to have new fleets of ships that could capitalise on this suddenly gigantic market of people who wanted to travel – immigrants looking for a new life, titans of industry traveling for business, families going across the ocean to visit relatives or friends, and people journeying to Europe to take the Grand Tour! The steamship and its older brother, the steam-train, had given birth to an age of mass travel and tourism!
Having a reliable service did come with other advantages: for the first time, fresh food was available to paying passengers! Since nobody ever expected to spend more than a week or two at sea, it was finally possible to load fresh provisions on board, knowing that the voyage would be over (or nearly over) by the time they went off.
While speed, reliability and catering had definitely improved – not everything had. For example – sleeping arrangements. Ships like the Atlantic had a two-class system: steerage-class for paying immigrants and people looking to cross the Atlantic ocean on the cheap, and more affluent ‘Saloon-Class’ passengers…the closest equivalent to First-Class in the 1870s.
Like as on other ships of the era, passengers were segregated, typically into three (or depending on how you count them, four) broad groups: Single men, married couples and/or families with children, and finally, single women. Your marital status determined where you were allowed to sleep on the ship. Single men were housed forward of the main saloons and lounges, in the front of the ship. Couples, or families with children, were housed in the middle of the ship, and single women were housed at the back, or stern.
The idea behind this arrangement of the cabins (which ranged from comfortable four-berth family cabins, to two-bunk arrangements for couples, etc) was that respectable, upstanding men and women of good breeding, married (or nearly married) and with children, would be a suitable and safe barrier to prevent horny, single young men from falling upon defenseless, single women!
By separating single men and single women with married couples and families in the middle of the ship across both saloon or cabin-class passengers, and steerage-class passengers, the ship would avoid any instances of unwanted groping, sexual assault or other instances of shocking impropriety! The segregation between the various groups aboard ship was firmly enforced by the ship’s officers and stewards.
The two classes on board the Atlantic were divided, not only by marital status, but also by class, and class determined where you could go on the ship. For example, saloon or cabin-class passengers had access to the lounge and dining saloon, but also access to the open main decks, so that they could see the views of the sea around them as the ship steamed along. The ship’s dining room or saloon was the largest, most open room on the ship, and even included a piano for passenger entertainment. Steerage passengers could only move around within the interior of the ship, and not out on deck. While they were free to mix and mingle among themselves during the day – after lights’ out at 11:00pm each night – everybody was expected to know their place – to be in it – and not to leave it until the next morning!
As far as steamers went, the Atlantic was modern in many respects, boasting flushing toilets, hot, running water (warmed by the steam that drove the engines), fresh hot food, and technological advancements which would ensure a faster, and safer crossing. The ship also boasted one of the first uses of electricity at sea – not in electric lighting – not even in wireless telegraphy – but in call-bells. Passengers lucky enough to book cabin-class tickets had the benefit of call-buttons in their cabins, as well as in other parts of the ship such as the main public rooms. Stewards could now literally be summoned at the press of a button!
That said, the ship was still old-fashioned in other respects: For example, in an age before the widespread use of electricity, lighting the ship was done entirely by oil-fired lamps and candles – a significant safety-hazard on a rocking, rolling steamship in the middle of the ocean. In fact, one of the duties of the ship’s stewards on the Atlantic was to be on the lookout for smashed oil-lamps in heavy weather, when they might fall, break, and spread flammable liquid all over the floor.
The Last Voyage of the Atlantic
The Atlantic was considered a highly successful, and safe, ocean liner. Food was plentiful, cabins were comfortable, and the amenities were surprisingly modern. Remember that most homes in the 1870s didn’t have hot, running water, flushing toilets and central heating! Since its maiden voyage in 1871, the Atlantic had had nearly twenty successful voyages between New York and Liverpool and apart from a minor tussle involving bumping into another ocean-liner (a common accident in those days), it had a spotless record of sailings.
Everything changed on the 20th of March, 1873.
On that day, the Atlantic departed Liverpool as usual, and nothing was seen to be out of the ordinary – just another Thursday, like any other. On board were 835 passengers, including 14 stowaways, and two pregnant women (who gave birth during the voyage). The ship followed its usual route sailing past the southern Irish coast, and then out into the transatlantic shipping lanes.
The journey was hard going. The weather was hardly ideal, and the heavy, rolling seas meant that the ship was fighting against the swells for every yard of forward momentum. In command is Captain James Agnew Williams. Beneath him are the Chief Officer, John Firth, 2nd Officer, Henry Metcalf, 3rd Officer, Cornelius Brady, and 4th Officer John Brown. Unlike on later, and larger ships, the position of Chief Officer and First Officer (which, for example, on the Olympic-class ships of the 1910s, were separate positions), were combined into one position in the 1870s.
Along with the deck-officers are a number of other crew, including up to seven engineering crew, six quartermasters, the ship’s surgeon or medical officer, and several dozen members of the crew, mostly able seamen. In total, officers and crew numbered 143 in total.
The 830-odd passengers included 32 passengers in “saloon” or “cabin”-class, and 615 passengers (men, women and children) in steerage. In all, there were 86 children aboard, approximately 40 each, of boys and girls, of various ages, ranging from toddlers and infants, to adolescents.
Thus loaded, the Atlantic set out to cross the ocean which it had done so many times in the past with no issues. As the ship sailed further westwards, however, the weather, fresh to begin with, only started getting more and more turbulent with every passing day. During his daily rounds, Captain Williams would confer with his officers regarding speed, position and heading. He would also speak to Chief Engineer John Foxley for a report on the engines, boilers, and most importantly – fuel consumption. Like every steamship of the era, the Atlantic was a coal-fired steamer, with coal being brought from the coal-bunkers on wheelbarrows, by trimmers, to be dumped next to the boilers, whereupon it was shoveled into the furnaces by stokers or firemen.
It was the job of Foxley and his fellow engineers to keep an eye on things like steam pressure, lubrication, and wear and tear on the engines – especially important during rough weather. It was also Foxley’s job to inform the captain of any issues involving the engines, boilers, or fuel-supply. One of Foxley’s daily tasks was measuring fuel consumption. Every day at the same time, he would have to determine how much coal had been burnt in the last 24 hours, against how much coal they had left, and how far they could travel on the reserve.
The voyage was rough. While the Atlantic’s billed top speed was 14kt (maybe 15 in good weather), during the heavy seas on its latest crossing, the ship would be lucky to reach 12kt, with the whole vessel pitching and rolling with every wave.
Halfway through the voyage, during one of his daily inspections, Captain Williams asked Foxley for his usual morning coal-report. Foxley duly gave his morning report about the amount of coal still available onboard for the onward journey. However, the information provided to the captain was not always 100% accurate. Engineers routinely under-represented the amount of coal left in a ship’s bunkers during the voyage. This practice meant that the amount of coal reported was always less than the actual amount of coal available. The reason for this was very simple – in the event of a real emergency, there would actually be more coal than reported, to keep the ship going.
Into the Storms
As the Atlantic’s voyage continued, Captain Williams grew increasingly concerned. A trip that usually took a week was now taking eight days…nine days…ten days. The storms that the Atlantic had started to encounter were not dissipating, and the ship’s engines continued to struggle against the heaving waves. Just seven days out from England, the ship was hit broadside by a rogue wave that reached as high as the boat-deck, tearing lifeboat #4 from its davits and washing it out to sea.
It was through these fearsome waves that the ship had to fight, constantly slowing its engines to prevent mechanical failure. From 14kt down to 12, down to 8…down to 6kt…the Atlantic was struggling to make headway, and while the ship was in no danger of sinking – there was another danger: Running out of coal.
Just to maintain speed and heading, the ship’s engines were burning enormous amounts of coal to keep up the seam pressure required to power the engines, and the ship was still nowhere near New York City. Fearing that the ship might run out of coal before it reached New York, Captain Williams decided to take emergency actions, and executed the 19th century equivalent of an emergency aircraft landing – premature docking.
In the event of a ship running low on coal, it was common practice to divert to the nearest port, drop anchor, re-coal the ship and then continue on to your original destination, however, re-coaling mid-voyage was usually seen as an action of last resort. Coaling halfway to your destination suggested that the ship had not been properly provisioned when it left its home port, or else, had been poorly managed during the voyage – either instance being an embarrassing miscalculation which would reflect badly on the ship’s crew, and by extension, the shipping line that employed them! After all – the whole purpose of taking a steamer was because they were more reliable – what was the point of taking a steamer if the steamer had to keep stopping for coal?
Diverting to Halifax
Despite efforts to conserve coal, the Atlantic still appeared to be running out of fuel. Two days out from New York City (approx 400 miles), Captain Williams once again asked Foxley about the coal situation. Foxley knew that the ship still had 160 tons aboard, but – as was his habit in under-representing the amount of coal on board, so that there would be a fuel-reserve for emergencies – Foxley reports 127 tons remaining.
Williams knew that the ship required at least 130 tons to reach New York – less than what the ship actually had on board – but thanks to Foxley’s misrepresentations, Williams decides to err on the side of caution instead. Not wanting his ship to be caught literally dead in the water with no steam, he decides to divert to the nearest major port to re-coal his ship, re-provision with fresh food, drinks and other necessities, and then proceed to New York fully stocked (or at least, stocked enough to reach New York with supplies to spare).
The ship’s officers prepare to alter course, from West-Southwest, to Nor-Northeast, heading, not for New York City – but for Halifax, Nova Scotia. While ships docking at Halifax is a common occurrence, for the purposes of coaling and re-provisioning, the Atlantic has one great disadvantage:
None of the officers have ever gone to Halifax before. Never having traveled there, they were not familiar with the harbour conditions, nor the precise layout of the coastline, and to make things even more treacherous, they will be traveling there at night, in stormy conditions, which would make the ship harder to control.
With coal-supply no longer an issue, Captain Williams orders to officers on watch to alert the engine-room to the change in direction and destination. The telegraph on the bridge is set to Full Ahead, so that the ship may arrive as soon as possible, thereby reducing as much as possible, any chances of delays once they have arrived in Canada.
The Sambro Island Lighthouse
Halifax Harbour, while one of the largest harbours on the Canadian Atlantic coastline, is filled with dangers. While the harbour is wide, it is also shallow, and running aground on sandbars and rocks is a real risk. To guide ships towards the harbour, in 1759, the Sambro Island Lighthouse was erected on Sambro Island near the harbour entrance. Captain Williams knows this, and gives orders to Second Officer Henry Metcalf, officer-of-the-watch, to keep an eye out for the lighthouse. The captain’s orders are clear:
The ship is to proceed at its current speed and heading until it either spots the lighthouse, or until 3:00am – whichever comes first, upon which time the captain was to be roused from his sleep, the anchors dropped, and the ship would stop engines and wait out the storm, in preparation for entering Halifax at dawn. It is now the 31st of March.
The Approach to Halifax
As the Atlantic changes course towards Canada, Captain Williams declares that he is going to bed. He leaves his instructions with Officer Metcalf, as well as a separate order with his personal steward, to wake him just before 3:00am, the time specified that the ship should stop for the night. The captain retires to his cabin, but before he can turn in, a newspaper journalist traveling as a passenger asks for a brief interview. The captain agrees, and the two men retire to his cabin to talk. Past midnight, the journalist finishes his interview and leaves the bridge. Captain Williams turns in.
On the bridge are Officer Metcalf, and quartermaster Robert Thomas – as on most ships of the era, the actual steering of the vessel is managed by quartermasters, usually nicknamed ‘QM’s’ for short. At the very front of the ship, able seaman Joseph Carroll is acting as forward lookout. To starboard is Patrick Kiely, and Fourth Officer Brown is patrolling the ship’s stern, along with quartermaster Charles Roylance, who is also the aft lookout.
By now, it is 2:45am, April 1st. As requested, the captain’s steward walks onto the bridge and heads to the captain’s cabin to wake him up. However, he’s intercepted by Officer Metcalf, who says that the captain is not to be disturbed. Ahead, the sea is stormy, but there are no obvious obstructions in sight, giving Metcalf the incorrect assumption that the ship is on course for Halifax. What neither he, nor any of the other crew realise is that the Atlantic is not actually heading towards Halifax! The storm has blown the ship far off course, twelve miles west of the harbour entrance.
Unaware of this, the ship’s officers and lookouts expect to spot the beacon of Sambro Island Lighthouse any minute now, off to the port, or left, side of the ship’s bow. Quartermaster Thomas, one of the few crew on board who has actually traveled to Halifax before, grows suspicious – surely if they were on course, they would’ve seen the lighthouse by now? He informs Officer Metcalf that the ship may be off course, and that they should either slow down, stop, or alter course as a precaution.
Before Metcalf can decide what to do, the two forward lookouts called “Breakers ahead!“. Officer Metcalf realises too late that the ship is heading, not for the open mouth of the harbour, but towards the Nova Scotia coastline! As with the Titanic, the next order is “Hard a’Starboard!“, the order to turn the ship’s wheel hard to the right, to push the tiller in that direction, thereby steering the ship left! Metcalf’s next order was for the ship’s telegraph – FULL ASTERN. Before the ship can clear the rocks and make a full turn, however, it slams headfirst into the breakers off of Meagher’s Island!
The grinding, screeching sound wakes up the passengers and the ship’s keel is torn out like a tin can! The shuddering and vibrating makes some passengers think that the ship has finally arrived in Halifax, and that the anchor-chains are being dropped to keep the ship from drifting.
The sudden loss of momentum causes the ship’s slipstream to rush through the vessel, extinguishing almost all the lamps and candles in the corridors and cabins, plunging the ship into almost total darkness! Captain Williams is thrown awake from the impact against the rocks and rushes out onto the bridge. The time on the wheelhouse clock: 3:15am.
Captain Williams took immediate charge of the situation. He orders the ship’s engines to remain at FULL ASTERN, so that they can reverse the ship off the rocks, but before the engines can affect any kind of serious movement, another huge wave hits the stern of the ship, throwing it up onto the rocks! The Atlantic is now broadside to the shore, with its port (left) side facing the sea, and starboard side towards the shore.
Officer Metcalf orders the lifeboats to be swung out, and loaded with women, children and what few men there are around. The captain decides that this is suicidal – with the waves so high, there is no way to row the ship’s ten lifeboats to shore, and orders the passengers out. Metcalf refuses to leave, and the lifeboat with the men onboard, and himself as commanding officer, is lowered down the port side into the sea.
Once the lifeboat was cut free from the falls connecting it to the ship, the massive waves which had so successfully shifted the entire ship up onto the rocks grabbed the lifeboat and smashed it against the hull, obliterating it completely, and killing everybody aboard – including officer Henry Metcalf.
With the ship not appearing to be in any immediate danger, the captain ordered everybody on deck. Stewards walked through the corridors, knocking on cabins to wake up passengers and order them up onto the boat-deck. On the bridge, Captain Williams issues another order, to the two quartermasters on duty: QM Roylance, and QM Speakman. They are to begin the process of calling for help.
Wrecking on Meagher’s Island
With the ship stuck fast on the rocks, Captain Williams has to decide what to do next. Not being awake at the time of impact, Williams has no idea where the ship is, and with the lamps extinguished because of the crash, there’s almost no light with which to see for him to try and pinpoint their position.
After raising the alarm and canceling any further attempts to evacuate passengers by lifeboats, the captain orders the two quartermasters, Roylance and Speakman – to begin summoning help.
30 years before the advent of wireless telegraphy, the two quartermasters are limited in using whatever they can find to raise the alarm. They open a crate of flares and, standing on the bridge, they start launching distress rockets high over the ship, and into the storm. They use the only source of light – the still-burning binnacle lamp on the bridge – to ignite the rocket-fuses and launch them into the sky. It’s hoped that the sound of the rockets exploding, or the flash of the flares, will alert villagers on the island to the presence of the sinking ship.
Wedged across the rocks, the Atlantic starts to take on water, and becomes unstable. Pounded by waves, every last one of the ship’s ten lifeboats are either smashed against the hull of the vessel as they’re lowered into the sea, or else are torn off the davits before they can be loaded.
As Roylance and Speakman continue to light and fire the distress rockets, the stern of the Atlantic shifts dramatically and the propeller strikes the rocks under the keel, shearing off the blades and causing the propeller-shaft to over-spin. Chief Engineer Foxley orders the engines to be shut down, and prepares his fellow engineers to evacuate the ship’s engine room and boiler rooms. Before leaving, they open the safety valves on the boilers, discharging the pressurised steam inside, to prevent a catastrophic boiler explosion. Further destabilised by the loss of the rudder and propeller, the ship rocks violently and the aft end slides off the rocks which it had been swept onto, and starts to sink.
As the stern slides off the rocks and into the water, calamity is unfolding below decks. Unable to find their way out of the rapidly flooding passenger quarters in the pitch-blackness, hundreds of women and children drown in their cabins, or in the corridors that lead to the boat-deck. The bow, still out of the water and wedged on the rocks, fares slightly better, and male passengers and some crew, housed in the bow and admiships, are able to scramble out on the hull by opening portholes or smashing windows.
Escaping the Sinking Ship
What passengers and crew which had managed to scramble out of the ship started climbing onto the railings, rigging and masts of the ship to keep them from being swept off the decks and into the waves. As the ship rocks even further, Speakman and Roylance are unable to keep firing rockets. Up to now, eight have been successfully discharged from the bridge. As they prepare to fire the ninth, the ship rocks and the rocket explodes prematurely, hitting both men in the face. Before they can recover, or fire off more rockets, the rolling hull of the ship causes the crate containing the rockets to be thrown off the bridge and into the sea.
By now, the stern is almost entirely underwater and the ship is listing 30 degrees to port. To keep the passengers and crew safe, the officers, led by Chief Officer John Firth, direct the passengers to climb onto the ship’s masts and yardarms. At least here they will be able to hold on, or sit in the rigging, high enough out of the water that they won’t be hit by the waves, while they figure out how to evacuate them.
What nobody has yet realised is that one member of the crew has already made it to land – Quartermaster Robert Thomas – the helmsman – was thrown off the ship and washed ashore. Alive, he scrambles to his feet and runs up the cliffs to try and find help. At the same time, at a farmhouse on Meagher’s Island, the O’Reilly family is roused by the sounds of – what they initially believed – to be artillery-fire! The head of the family runs out into the storm and witnesses the last of the Atlantic’s distress rockets being fired into the air. As he runs in the direction of the flare, he stumbles into somebody coming the other way – Quartermaster Thomas!
Mr. O’Reilly takes Thomas back to the farmhouse and warms him up while his family provides him with food and drink. Thomas relays the news of the wrecking of the steamship Atlantic and together, the two men rouse the inhabitants of the island to mount a rescue mission. For the first time since 3:15 that morning, the crew of the Atlantic have finally discovered where they are – on the south side of Meagher’s Island.
While Thomas is raising the alarm on Meagher’s Island with the help of the O’Reilly family, Quartermaster Speakman has started trying to rescue passengers and crew from the sinking ship. With a rope, he has managed to swim to the nearby Golden Rule Rock, and after establishing a lifeline, starts guiding people ashore.
Quartermaster John Speakman, who helped to fire the distress-rockets, and rig lifelines from the ship to help the survivors
It’s at this time that Mr. O’Reilly and Quartermaster Thomas arrive back at the wreck-site. Speakman returns with Thomas and Mr. O’Reilly to the farmhouse, where Mr. O’Reilly’s daughter, Sarah, has started preparing bread and soup for any survivors, which are now slowly making their way inland and towards the O’Reilly farm.
Building on Quartermaster Speakman’s efforts, the other members of the Atlantic’s crew start stringing out more lifelines. Ropes taken from the ship are lashed to the railings around the bow and are then swum across towards Golden Rule Rock. In time, five such lifelines have been established, and one by one, survivors start swimming from the ship to the shore, holding onto the ropes for support as they go, some of them bring more ropes so that a further lifeline can be linked between the rock itself, and the beach nearby.
On the ship itself, passengers try to rescue the men still trapped inside the ship. Using whatever tools they can find, those outside the ship walk along the sloping hull of the bow to where those inside hammer against windows and portholes to get their attention. Portholes are either opened or smashed with tools, and roughly 100 men are rescued from inside the ship.
John Hindley, aged 12. Photographed shortly after the wrecking of the S.S.Atlantic. The only child to survive the sinking.
One passenger who is able to fight his way out of the hull and onto the sloping hull with the help of the other survivors, is John Hindley, a 12-year-old boy. As the stern sinks into the crashing waves, every single woman and child aboard the Atlantic is drowned instantly. Hindley survived only because he had begged his mother and father to be allowed to sleep in the men’s quarters with his older brother, at the bow of the ship. This change in sleeping arrangements saved his life, and he was able to escape the sinking ship onto the decks while the childrens’ quarters at the stern sank into the waves.
By now, the residents of Meagher’s Island, and nearby communities, have heard about what has happened, and begin mounting rescues of their own, taking to the rolling seas in fishing boats, and multi-oared, shore-based lifeboats. Survivors are collected from Golden Rule Rock and rowed to Meagher’s Island, while other lifeboats row to the wreck to help survivors on the ship to escape. One of the last men off the ship is Captain James A. Williams, who later recounted his experiences, and how fearful he was that the ship would break its back at any moment, split in two, and sink.
Rescuing the Last Survivors
As dawn broke, the majority of the ship’s surviving passengers and crew had been rescued, either from Golden Rule Rock, or from the wreck of the Atlantic itself, but as the sun rose, it was suddenly realised that the ship still had survivors on board!
Chief Officer John Firth, passenger Rosa Bateman, and an unnamed cabin-boy had spent the whole night sitting in the mizzen mast of the wrecked ocean liner. Too high up for rescuers to reach, and too exhausted to climb down or jump and swim to a lifeboat, they had been abandoned, with the villagers on Meagher’s Island unable to find a safe way to rescue them.
The wreck of the Atlantic (on the left) over on its port side. April, 1873
Their salvation – for some of them, at least – came from an unlikely source – Reverend William Ancient – a clergyman on Meagher’s Island.
Ancient, a former sailor of many years’ experience, had retired from the navy to become a priest, and upon waking on the morning of the 1st of April, hurried to the wreck-site when he heard what had happened. With another lifeboat and a crew of villagers, he rowed out to the wreck and started to try and find a way to reach the three survivors trapped in the rigging. The cabin-boy jumped and was picked from the water. Officer Firth had a rope tied around him and then he too, jumped, and was hauled from the sea. Rosa Bateman, the only female passenger to escape the ship, was not so fortunate, however.
Tied to the mast by Officer Firth in an attempt to stop her from being swept out to sea, Mrs. Bateman had died of hypothermia by the time Reverend Ancient and his fellow rescuers had reached her.
Of the roughly 950 passengers and crew on board, only about 400 had survived – all of them men. Not a single woman, and only one child – 12-year-old John Hindley – had survived the the wreck of the S.S. Atlantic.
The Aftermath of the Disaster
In the days and weeks that followed the disaster, the villagers of Meagher’s Island and the survivors of the shipwreck all struggled to piece together what had happened, what had not happened, and what would happen next.
The most immediate issue was what to do with the ship.
By the afternoon of the 1st of April, 1873, the Atlantic had slipped entirely off the rocks upon which it had run aground, broken in half, and was starting to sink. Divers approached the wreck to retrieve the bodies of dead passengers and crew, some even using dynamite to blast the wreck apart to retrieve, not only the corpses, but also personal belongings of the survivors, and the cargo in the ship’s holds. The dead were laid out on the beach where the ship’s surviving officers stood guard over them, until such time as they could be prepared for burial.
The funeral-service for some of the Atlantic’s dead
Once the ship’s dead and its cargo and other items had been retrieved, the vessel was plundered and looted by villagers looking for anything leftover which might be of value. The cargo, waterlogged and damaged, was the subject of insurance-claims, which were duly paid out. Un-sellable, the ruined cargo was auctioned off to the highest bidders, to do with, or use, as they saw fit.
The bodies were buried across at least three cemeteries, including two for the protestant, and catholic victims of the disaster. Reverend Ancient, who had rescued Officer Firth and the cabin-boy, presided over the protestant burial service.
Newspaper account of the wrecking of the Atlantic. The man in the middle of the spread is the Atlantic’s captain, James Agnew Williams
Funds raised by the White Star Line, the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and other entities paid for such things as prizes and rewards for the heroes of the disaster, and compensation for the losses. Reverend Ancient received a gold hunter-pocketwatch in recognition of his efforts in saving Officer Firth and the cabin-boy, the last two people rescued from the ship before it sank entirely.
So, what happened afterwards?
Like with the sinking of the RMS Titanic, 40 years later, the Atlantic was subjected to a full court of inquiry to determine what had happened. In the end, the court found Captain Williams guilty of mismanagement of the ship and poor command of his crew. The White Star Line was blamed for insufficient coaling of its vessels (although this was later disproven and the charges dropped). While he shouldered most of the blame for what had happened due to his previous actions such as not staying on duty through the night, and not being fully aware of the ship’s fuel-situation, Captain Williams was nonetheless praised by the court for his leadership and direction during the disaster itself.
The Atlantic Today
The wrecking of the S.S. Atlantic faded from public consciousness with surprising swiftness. Two private cemeteries, and a memorial cenotaph, are the only period-reminders that the Atlantic was ever lost at all, and even these were quickly forgotten. The cenotaph was only rediscovered and restored in the 1980s!
Perhaps the most telling example of how quickly people forgot about the wreck of the Atlantic happened in 1929. It was in that year that a film was released, titled “ATLANTIC”! It’s a thrilling tale of death, disaster and mayhem at sea! Of a ship with not enough lifeboats! A ship that strikes an iceberg and which sinks with over a thousand people still trapped aboard! A ship named!…the RMS Titanic.
Yes that’s right. 1929 saw the first-ever “Titanic” ‘talkie’ film, with full music, sound-effects and dialogue. Because the White Star Line was still in operation when the film was being made, the producers could not use the name ‘Titanic’ in the title. To get around this, the filmmakers simply renamed their film to what they thought was a more generic title!…Unwittingly naming one disaster film after yet another disaster from the history of the White Star Line! So obscure had the wreck of the Atlantic become, just 56 years after it had happened, that nobody had realised the coincidence!
Today, the memory of the S.S. Atlantic is kept alive in Nova Scotia through museum exhibits, interpretation centers and historic parks, either in Halifax, or nearby Meagher’s Island (today renamed Mars’ Island), where artifacts, models and personal mementos from the wreck are on permanent display, telling the story of the White Star Line’s greatest shipwreck before the disaster of the Titanic, which so overshadowed it that the wrecking of the Atlantic became lost to history…
Further Reading
Want to find out more about the wreck of the S.S. Atlantic? Here’s the sources used for this posting, which cover the sinking in greater detail…
The Passengers & Crew of the S.S. Atlantic – this is an amazing resource. It attempts to list every single person on board the ship during its last voyage (keep in mind that the information here is taken from period records, so is not 100% accurate).
Ever since ancient times, Europeans have held the Far East in awe, fantasizing that countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Japan were magical kingdoms filled with all kinds of wondrous, rare and amazing commodities – silk, porcelain, tea, spices, beautiful timber, rare dyes, ivory, tortoiseshell, and fascinating jewels! Trade-goods such as ivory, ginger, cinnamon and pepper were exported from China and India all the way to Europe along a network of roadways, rivers and coastal sea-routes which eventually became collectively known as the ‘Silk Road’.
Commodities transported along the Silk Road were rare, expensive, exotic…and open to theft…unscrupulous dealers…confidence artists…spoilage or damage…and all manner of mishap. Added to that the fact that products took literally months to travel from India, Indonesia, Japan or China to Western Europe, and it’s no wonder that the prices paid for these things were astronomical!
To try and keep costs down and to maximise how much they could purchase (and sell) at any one time, European traders increasingly took to shipping vast amounts of exotic goods back to Europe by sea. However, this was expensive, dangerous, and extremely time-consuming, with a round-the-world voyage taking the better part of a year, or more, to complete. Having to sail around the Cape of Good Hope, or Cape Horn, meant that sea-voyages between Europe and Asia were never going to be easy, or safe.
To try and rectify this, ever since the 1500s, and the discovery of the Americas, Europeans had set their sights on trying to find a faster, easier route to Asia – one which didn’t sail around Africa, or around South America, one which could vastly speed up trade between East and West.
What is the Northwest Passage?
The route chosen to try and improve trade between Europe and Asia was one which sailed west across the Atlantic, north, past Greenland, and then west, past the northern coasts of Canada, and then south into the Pacific.
This route became known as the Northwest Passage.
In an era when Europeans were still calling mythical continents “Terra Australis Incognitia” (“Unknown Southern Land”), nobody actually knew whether a Northwest Passage even actually existed!…What if it did? What if it didn’t?
The only way to know for sure was to physically sail to Canada, and map out the entirety of the northern Canadian coastline to find out if it was even possible to sail from the Atlantic coast of Canada to the Pacific.
Numerous expeditions had tried over the years, with little success. Even famed navigator and Royal Navy officer, James Cook, legendary for mapping most of the South Pacific – had tried – and failed – to find the Northwest Passage.
In 1837, King William IV died, and his niece, the 18-year-old Princess Victoria, ascended the British throne as Queen Victoria!
The Victorian era, as the period between 1837-1901 is known, was an age of optimism, determination, confidence, and great technological advancements! Huge progress was made in the fields of medicine, manufacturing, industry, technology and communications during this time. It was for all these reasons that, in the 1840s, Britain decided that it was time for another crack at the Northwest Passage!
Equipping the Franklin Expedition
In the 1840s, the British Admiralty decided that the time was ripe for another expedition to the Northwest Passage. To lead this daring venture into the frozen north, it selected what it thought, was the best man for the job: Captain Sir John Franklin.
Born in 1786, Franklin was a man of considerable accomplishment. A veteran of the Napoleonic wars, and naval officer who fought alongside Admiral Nelson, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and former Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), Franklin was used to a rough life, and spending years away from home – both of which would be vital qualities required of any leader of such a perilous expedition! Franklin was also selected for his intelligence – of all the letters after his name and title, were three which were possibly, the most impressive: FRS. Fellow of the Royal Society!
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge – or the Royal Society, for short – is the oldest surviving, and most famous, learned society in the world. Since its establishment by royal charter by King Charles II in 1660, it has been at the forefront of scientific, technological and medical research and advancements for the past 360 years! Membership to the Royal Society is strictly by invitation ONLY, and to be invited to become a member (or more precisely, to be granted a ‘fellowship’) is not only a gigantic honour, but also confirmation of one’s vast contributions to the worlds of science and technology!
Famous fellows of the society included Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Stephen Hawking, Sir David Attenborough, Charles Darwin, and brainiac-of-brainiacs: Albert Einstein!
To gain admission to the Royal Society is so difficult that surely anybody who held the letters FRS after their name, was certainly not going to be some addlepated dunderhead, right? As if the powers-that-be needed even more convincing – Franklin had already headed a number of other expeditions to the Arctic in previous years! What else could one ask for? The Admiralty was convinced, and duly appointed Franklin to be expedition leader.
The Ships: Darkness and Terror…
With its leader selected, the next task was to find some way of getting the crew through the Arctic. The Admiralty selected two ships: The Erebus, and the Terror! Erebus is named for Erebos – Greek God of Darkness!
Two ships. Darkness, and Terror.
Sounds like a good omen!
A model of Sir John Franklin’s flagship – the HMS Erebus
To survive the long, likely multi-year voyage through the Arctic, the two ships were renovated or “fitted out” to be as well-built for their new task as possible. The two ships had already proved themselves capable of arctic exploration in the past – in the 1830s, both vessels had sailed in company to Antarctica with Sir James Clark Ross (after whom the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica is named), but the British Admiralty wasn’t taking any chances when it came to trying to find the mythical Northwest Passage.
To this end, the ships’ hulls were reinforced with iron plates and rivets to guard against crushing ice, striking icebergs, and slamming into rocks. The interiors were fitted out with cabins, galleys, toiletry facilities, libraries, an infirmary and physician’s offices, and the holds were modified to fit as many of the essential supplies as possible. As a further safeguard, they were also subdivided into watertight compartments, just like on later ships like the Titanic, to try and reduce the dangers of flooding if the ships were holed by ice.
On the technological side, the ships were equipped with steam engines and propellers, and even a rudimentary, steam-powered central-heating system, to keep the ships at least moderately comfortable in the freezing sub-zero temperatures that the crew were certain to encounter. To make sure that the ships weren’t rendered impotent and immovable by some sort of mechanical breakdown during the voyage, even diving suits were included in the equipment-stores, so that underwater repairs could be made.
Food and Drink for the Voyage
The Franklin Expedition was expecting to be away from civilisation for at least two to three years, during which time, they would have to survive almost entirely on whatever food they had brought with them. To this end, the ships were almost exclusively provisioned with one of the greatest wonder-products of the Victorian age!
Canned food.
Canned, and bottled food, have existed since the late 1700s. Canning started becoming really popular in the Georgian era, when Napoleon Bonaparte insisted that somebody had to come up with a convenient way of packaging large quantities of food so that it could be transported easily, stored safely, and wouldn’t spoil for weeks, months or even years at a time.
Food that was canned and sealed tight could last almost indefinitely – a useful trait for an expedition that would be away from civilisation for up to three years! Early canned food was packaged so well that the cans were nigh impossible to open! Soldiers during the Napoleonic Wars were given canned food as rations, but exactly how the hell you get into them – well – that was a matter of ingenuity! Bayonets, axes, hammers, chisels, pocketknives, and even the odd musket-round were all used to try and crack open the almost impregnable containers to gain access to the food within! Canning was almost too effective for its own good!
One of Stephen Goldner’s original cans, as used on the Franklin Expedition, discovered in the 1870s. Now in the National Maritime Museum in the UK. Can-openers not being invented until at least 1855, the Goldner cans were ‘opened’ using a hammer and chisel to cut a hole in the lid
The task of provisioning the Erebus and Terror with the necessary rations was given to industrialist Stephen Goldner. On the 1st of April, 1845 – April Fools’ Day – an order of…wait for it…8,000 cans of various types of foodstuffs…were to be prepared in just SEVEN weeks! If this was Franklin’s idea of an April Fools’ Day prank, then Goldner was not impressed, and while he tried his best to meet the order, the need to cook, pack, lid, and solder, over a thousand cans of food a week – all done by hand, remember – led to inevitable quality-control issues. In the understandable haste, lids were improperly placed on the cans, and the lead-based solder used to ensure an airtight seal between the lid and the can itself was unevenly and sloppily applied by workers who were rushing to meet deadlines. This led to some cans being left with tiny holes and gaps in the solder, or even instances where the lead solder leaked into the food due to improper application!
Whoops…
While Goldner’s canning company provided the crew with the majority of their everyday food, for more specialised, luxury provisions – and what good Victorian exploratory expedition could be without those – the ships’ officers turned to another supplier: Fortnums!
Founded in London in 1707, Fortnum & Mason has, for over 300 years, been one of the most famous department-stores in the world. Specialising in exotic and luxury foodstuffs, Fortnum’s has been patronised by almost every great explorer in history, from Sir Edmund Hilary to Earl Carnarvon and Howard Carter – and the officers of the Franklin expedition were no exception!
Along with the food, equal attention (or perhaps, rather more attention) was paid to something which was…rather more important: What the crew would drink during the voyage. As it would be impossible to bring along enough drinking water, wine, rum, grog, brandy and scotch for a trip expected to last at least two years, the Erebus, and the Terror were fitted out with a new innovation: Desalination plants! These water-filtration systems would be able to process seawater pumped up from the ocean and onto the ships, and make it drinkable, giving the crew – in theory – an endless supply of fresh, drinkable, desalinated water!
The Crew of the Franklin Expedition
Everybody knew that going to the Great White North was going to be a perilous and possibly fatal endeavour. Because of this, the Franklin Expedition had to choose its crew with great care. In total, the two ships – Erebus and Terror, were loaded with 134 men: 24 officers, and 110 seamen and other crew.
Among the crew were four surgeons, two blacksmiths, cooks, stewards, four stokers (to handle the steam-engines), royal marines, engineers, and dozens and dozens of able seamen. Added to this were the two captains: Of the Erebus – Captain Sir John Franklin himself, and of the Terror, Captain Francis Rawdon Crozier.
The two ships were fully provisioned and equipped, crewed and loaded, and left England on the 19th of May, 1845.
The Trip to Greenland
The first leg of Franklin’s voyage was from England to Greenland. Departing as they did, on the 19th of May, the ships sailed north, first to Scotland, and thence to Greenland. During this part of the voyage, the two arctic ships were accompanied by two more ships bringing up the rear with extra supplies and equipment. When the ships arrived in Greenland, the supply ships loaded their cargoes into the two arctic ships and prepared to head for home. Unnecessary equipment, cargoes, and all outgoing mail from the two expedition ships were loaded onto these ships during the expedition’s stay in Greenland, so that they could be returned to England. Along with all the mail and other things that wouldn’t be going on this epic voyage of discovery, were five men:
Thomas Burt, an armourer (aged 22), William Aitken, a royal marine (aged 37), James Elliot, a 20-year-old sailmaker, Robert Carr (another armourer, aged 23), and an able seaman named John Brown.
The five men, one from the Erebus, and four from the Terror, were excused participation in the expedition on the grounds of health – all five men had fallen ill, although what of was not recorded. They were loaded onto the departing supply ship, and went with it when it returned to England.
They didn’t know it yet, but these five men would later count their lucky stars to be the only members of the expedition to ever return alive.
The Voyage to the Great White North
Once the ships had been re-provisioned, and all necessary supplies and shopping had been accounted for and completed, the next step in the voyage was the most perilous: entering the Arctic Ocean!
With their modern, canned provisions, central heating, steam engines, desalination plants, and even the first, rudimentary daguerreotype cameras, everybody back home in England felt that the Franklin Expedition was by far the best-equipped and most prepared crew that had ever set out to tackle the ferocity of the frozen north, and if they couldn’t find the Northwest Passage…if indeed such a passage even existed!…then nobody would!
The ships left Greenland at the height of summer, and sailed northwest, towards Canada. The aim was to reach the Arctic during the warmest months of the year, to give them as much time as possible to explore the region before the all-too-short Arctic warm season faded away, and they would be doomed to spending months trapped in the ice, waiting for the spring thaw the next year.
By the 28th of July, 1845, the ships had crossed Baffin Bay off the west coast of Greenland. It was at this point that the ships were spotted by two whalers sailing south – the Enterprise and the Prince of Wales. This would be the last time that any of the Franklin crew, or their two ships – would be spotted by European eyes. It was shortly after this that the Erebus and the Terror disappeared into the frozen, merciless embrace of the Arctic, to begin their expedition proper.
The Sea of the Midnight Sun
Exactly what happened to the remaining 129 men of the Franklin Expedition from July 28th onwards, can only ever be guessed at. Few written records remain, and what eyewitness accounts that there were (by Inuit eskimoes native to northern Canada) were initially, largely discarded as fanciful, overblown and inaccurate, by rescuers who refused to believe the truth of what had actually taken place so far from civilisation.
1845: The First Year
The Erebus and the Terror sailed in company westwards from Baffin Bay and into the frozen wastes of the Arctic Ocean. With only scant maps to guide them, and absolutely no ability to rely on compass-bearings (being so close to the North Pole, magnetic compasses were useless), the crew had to rely on the positions of the sun, stars and moon to navigate.
The Arctic summer was particularly cold that year, and progress was slow. By the time the ice started to freeze up again in the approaching winter, the two vessels had only made it as far as Cornwallis Island. Unable to go any further, Franklin and his crew made the decision to stop here for the winter. The ships were anchored off the coast of a tiny, gravely outpost sticking up out of the water – Beechey Island.
The Beechey Island graves, three from Franklin’s expedition, and one from a later rescue mission in the 1850s
Along with being their winter camping-site, Beechey was also where the crew of the Franklin Expedition farewelled the first three of their own: John Torrington (Petty Officer), William Braine (private, Royal Marines), and John Hartnell (Able Seaman). Later autopsies on the corpses determined that the three men had died of what the Victorians called ‘Consumption’ – or tuberculosis.
1846: The Second Year
With the spring thaw, the ships started moving forward once more. It was Franklin’s job to find the fastest, safest route through the Arctic to the Pacific Ocean, and to try and achieve this, he was determined to avoid the more extreme, more northern routes that might be available to him, and instead stick to southern passages through the Arctic. After mapping Cornwallis Island, the Franklin expedition had two choices to make:
They could either sail directly west, between Melville Island to the north, and Victoria Island to the south, and out into the Arctic Ocean, or else south, between Prince-of-Wales Island and Somerset Island.
Not wishing to linger in extremely-northern latitudes for any longer than was absolutely necessary, Franklin’s crew elected to sail south, reasoning that it might be warmer, and therefore, easier to navigate. To this end, they sailed from Cornwallis Island through Peel Sound, a stretch of water between Prince-of-Wales Island to the west, and Somerset Island, to the east.
What nobody aboard the Erebus or the Terror could’ve known at the time was that they were sailing into a deathtrap.
‘The Erebus in the Ice – 1846’, a painting by Belgian artist Francois Musin
The problem with sailing south during the spring thaw of 1846 through the Sound was that this was the exact same route that all the sheet-ice, icebergs and growlers took, when they too, broke free from other bodies of ice, and started drifting! Currents drove them south towards Canada, and Franklin’s two ships soon found themselves trapped in the mother of all arctic traffic-jams! Had they sailed west, the ice would simply have floated past them as the expedition made for the open sea past Melville Island, but by going south – the Franklin ships ended up going in the exact same direction as all the ice that they were trying so desperately to avoid! The result? The ships became stuck in ice. Again.
At first, Franklin’s crew were unphased. After all, they knew that something like this was likely to happen, and so once they had made as much forward progress as they could, they dropped anchor off King William Island on the 12th of September, 1846, and prepared to make winter camp, yet again. Not wishing to stay onboard the ships in case they broke free of the ice prematurely, or were crushed by the compacting force of more ice piling up behind them, the crew instead offloaded necessary supplies from the ships and set up camp on King William Island itself, where they would be safe from the risk of ice cracking, breaking and splitting apart if the floes and sheets shifted unexpectedly.
1847: The Third Year
By early 1847, it was time to start moving again. The spring thaw had come and while the ice did start breaking up, as it should’ve done, it wasn’t nearly as much as one might’ve expected. The ships moved at literally a glacial speed, limited entirely by the movement (or lack of movement) of the ice which surrounded them.
At the end of Peel Sound, the two ships once again reached a junction where they would have to make a decision: Sail east, around King William Island, or sail south, past the island, and then westwards past Victoria Island and continue onwards to find the Northwest Passage.
Unsure of the exact geography of King William Island, and whether or not they would be able to sail all the way around it, the ships chose to stick to their current route and sail south.
Again, it was a decision that they would come to regret. What none of them could’ve known was that by sailing east and around King William Island, they would avoid the heaviest ice-floes, popping out near the southern coast, and then sailing on past Victoria Island’s southern coastline and towards the Pacific. By sailing directly past King William Island’s western coast, however, they were headed into a virtual logjam of ice, which packed together in an immovable, frozen barrier, their movement slowed to a crawl thanks to all the small islands that bridged the gap between Victoria and King William Islands.
It was through this narrow, congested, ice-clogged channel that the two ships now had to navigate.
The men tried everything to get through the ice. Axes, sledgehammers, chisels and ice-saws were used to cleave, slice and cut through the ice, which was several inches, or even feet thick, but their efforts yielded negligible results, with the ships barely crawling forwards. In desperation, the men even resorted to using more dangerous (but also more effective) mining techniques to get through the ice!
Using augers, the men drilled shafts into the ice, and packed them with gunpowder. The powder was tamped down and fuses were lit. The explosions fractured the ice, but not nearly enough to break it into manageable chunks, once again forcing the men to expend valuable calories in shifting the tons of ice by using hand-tools.
By May, 1847, the ice remained just as immovable as ever, and it was at this point that the crews started to lose hope. With explosives running low, no coal to fire the engines, and the men exhausted from the freezing cold and backbreaking labour, morale started to plummet among the crews.
What happened next is only known thanks to a message, stored in a metal tube and hidden in a cairn (a pile of stones built up to form a pillar) that was left by the Franklin crew. Dated the 28th of May, 1847, it stated that four days previously on the 24th, a party of eight men (two officers and six men) had left the winter encampment on King William Island, and were attempting to explore and map the island. The note concluded “All Well”.
1848: The Fourth Year
Whatever the hopes of the Franklin crew might’ve been, they appeared to have vanished quickly. Just a few weeks after the note in the cairn had been written, Captain Sir John Franklin died, on the 11th of June, 1847. With the ice refusing to thaw for a second year in a row, the men remained trapped on King William Island throughout 1847 and into 1848, where the ice…AGAIN…refused to melt!
The original message in the cairn – AKA the ‘Victory Point Note’
Getting desperate, the men decided that the time had come to look to their own salvation, and to abandon the mission entirely. On the 25th of April, the cairn was revisited, and the note extracted from within. An addendum was written on the few inches of remaining paper, stating that Franklin had died, and that the crew were abandoning their ships to the Arctic pack-ice. By now, twenty-four additional men had died. From 134 to begin with, minus 5, left them with 129. Minus Franklin was 128, minus 23 others, was 105 surviving crew.
Exactly what the twenty-four men (of which Franklin was one), had died of is not recorded, although later examination of the bodies revealed a mix of scurvy, tuberculosis, pneumonia, hypothermia, and lead poisoning.
Deciding that it was safer to leave the ships and head south to find civilisation, the crews took the drastic step of lowering the ships’ lifeboats onto the ice. Packing the lifeboats with all the available food, tools and other equipment that they might possibly need, the remaining 100-odd men, after consulting a few charts, made for Back River, 250 miles away, to the south. They reasoned that, if they could reach the river, then they could sail the boats south, and find help.
And so, on the 26th of April, 1848, pulling lifeboats and sledges packed with food and materiel, the 105 surviving crew started off on the journey that they hoped, would lead to their own salvation. Leaving the ships behind, they headed to King William Island, and started the agonising, freezing, painful and exhausting trek south.
With little water, freezing temperatures, snowstorms, dwindling provisions of increasingly questionable edibility, and suffering from everything from frostbite to scurvy, lead-poisoning and pneumonia, the men headed off into the frigid arctic wastes towards Back River, never to be seen again.
The Franklin Rescue Missions
Franklin’s crew had been forewarned that they should expect to spend at least two years, if not three, in the freezing north of the Canadian archipelago, and that they would not likely return home for many, many years. Everybody knew this. Franklin knew it, Crozier, his second in command, knew it, the admirality knew it, and Lady Franklin, Sir John’s wife, also knew it.
It was for this reason that two whole years passed, before any great concern was raised about what might be happening to the Franklin crew. In 1847, Lady Jane Franklin started getting worried, and began a gentle pressure on the Admiralty to send out a search party to try and find her husband.
The Admiralty, however…decided not to. They saw no need. After all, the Franklin Expedition was expected to be gone for up to three years! There was surely no need to panic! Not yet, anyway. However, not everybody shared the Admiralty’s confidence in the Franklin crew.
One of the men who didn’t was a certain fiction author and journalist, a man who was a close, personal friend of Lady Franklin – a man named Charles Dickens. Using his journal, Household Words, Dickens and Lady Franklin roused up public support for a rescue mission, and between 1848 to 1858, nearly four dozen search-and-rescue missions were launched to try and find the Lost Expedition, with Lady Franklin personally sponsoring…wait for it…SIX different expeditions to try and find her husband, or else, to discover his fate!
So…what happened to Sir John Franklin?
Franklin’s Lost Expedition
Exactly what happened to Franklin’s expedition has been a mystery for over 170 years. Nobody knows all the facts, and nobody knows all the truths. What is known is gleamed from what few scant documents and relics that could be found, and what eyewitness accounts the search-and-rescue teams could gleam from local Inuit natives. So, what did happen to the Franklin crew?
What follows is the most widely-accepted and, believed-to-be, accurate timeline of events.
April 26th, 1848. After two winters and two summers trapped in the ice, the Franklin crew decide to abandon their vessels, pack what supplies they can carry onto sledges and lifeboats, and trek south to Back River, to try and save their own skins.
The 104 remaining men drag their supplies onto King William Island, and head due south. It is freezing cold and the going is impossibly hard. There are no trees, no grass, no bushes…no vegetation of any kind. Just freezing wind and scattered limestone shale all over the place. The exhausted, hungry, starving men are struggling to heave the massive lifeboats along, stopping every few hours for rest and food, or to try and make camp.
This is what we know, according to all surviving written records. What happened next was gleamed from testimony taken from local Inuit Eskimos living in the area.
Unable to make it to the river, the men returned to the ships, deciding that it was safer to stay aboard them, rather than risk their lives out in the open. In 1849, when they felt stronger, they started out again in smaller groups, heading south once more.
With rations almost exhausted, the crew learn how to hunt seals and caribou to survive. Where possible, the Inuit assist them, either in hunting, or in butchering their kills. Each party thanks the other, using gifts of meat to repay each others’ kindnesses. The men learn how to cook their kills by starting fires using seal-blubber for fuel.
Slowly, parties of men of greater and lesser numbers, start to leave the Erebus to try and once again, make the perilous trek south.
During the winter of 1849-1850, the Inuit witness the crew performing a military-style burial ceremony. It is believed to be the funeral of Captain Franklin’s second-in-command – Captain Francis M. Crozier, officer in command of the Terror.
Captain Francis Crozier, photographed in 1845 before his departure on the Franklin Expedition
After this, more Inuit witnessed more crews of men still trying to head south. One group of up to forty men were witnessed dragging a boat behind them. They later speak of coming across a campsite littered with dead bodies, racked by starvation, cold and disease. Examinations of the bodies…or what’s left of them, anyway…caused the bleak prospect of cannibalism to rise to the surface…a fate later confirmed by proper autopsies.
By summer, 1850, the ice finally thaws. The remaining crew try to get the Erebus moving again, but severely weakened and ill, they almost all succumb to starvation and disease. Inuit recall boarding the ship to find the men dead in their cabins.
After this, in 1851, the Inuit locals report the existence of four more men. Accompanied by a dog, they head west. Who these men are, where they ended up, and what became of them is unknown. These men – whoever they are, and whatever became of them – are believed to be the last survivors of the Franklin Expedition.
These details, pieced together from written records, eyewitness testimonies from the Inuit, and relics and evidence recovered during the several fruitless searches for the Franklin crew, are all that are conclusively known about the fate of the men. Between buried bodies, human remains, and a single ship’s lifeboat with two corpses inside it, there was precious little to go on, and by the end of the 1850s, it was conclusively proven that the Franklin Expedition – widely believed to be the most well-prepared, well-stocked, most technologically-advanced polar expedition ever assembled – had been a horrifying, abject and abysmal failure, which tested mankind’s resolve and limits to so far beyond their breaking-points that polite, Victorian-era society scarcely dared to believe it.
Why did the Franklin Expedition Fail?
The loss of the Franklin Expedition is one of the great human tragic mysteries of the world, up there with the abandonment of the Mary Celeste, the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony, and the loss of the S.S. Waratah.
What happened? How did it happen? Why? These were the questions that Lady Franklin, the Admiralty, and the millions of people all over the world, demanded answers to, when the worst was finally revealed in the years following the exhaustive search-and-rescue efforts made in the 1850s.
So, what exactly went wrong?
The Ships
On the surface, the Erebus and the Terror looked like the ideal vessels for the Franklin Expedition. They were robust, well-built warships which had already proved themselves in arctic exploration well before they were selected as the vessels which would convey the Franklin crews to glory! The ships had been strengthened, reinforced with iron sheeting, had had central heating installed, and steam-engines with propellers and comfortable quarters prepared for the men. So, what went wrong?
Before they were used to convey Franklin and his men into the pages of history, the Erebus and the Terror had been used by Sir James C. Ross, during his explorations of Antarctica. And before that, the two vessels had been bomb ships! Bomb ships were a type of warship designed to fire mortar-rounds, instead of the conventional cannon-shot that most sailing warships would’ve used. They were literally used to bombard the enemy – hence ‘bomb ships’.
Deck-plans of the Erebus
Because of this, their construction meant that they had to be very stable, to withstand the powerful recoil of the mortars going off on their decks. This meant that they were heavy, and had low centers of gravity, to reduce the risk of them capsizing and rolling over from the recoil of the mortars. This is great in battle, and even great when you’re sailing through the depths of the Southern Ocean…but it’s useless up in the Canadian archipelago! These heavy, ungainly ships with their deep drafts were unsuited for the shallow waters of the Arctic, especially when it came to weaving through the dozens of little islands immediately north of the Canadian mainland.
In the 1840s, the two ships had been converted to steam-propulsion, but crudely. Steamships did exist in the 1840s, but the engines installed on these two vessels had one great flaw – they weren’t maritime engines! Instead of purpose-built ship’s engines, the Erebus and the Terror were fitted out with small steam-locomotive engines used to power trains! Weighing up to 15 tons each, the engines were of a poor and inefficient design, and nowhere near powerful enough to generate the horsepower required to move the ships forward at any appreciable speed, or for any great distance, partially because neither were they given anywhere near enough coal! When the ships had been provisioned in England, only 120 tons each of coal, had been provided to them. At 10 tons a day, this would last just 12 days.
12 days’ worth of coal, for a voyage expected to last three years.
Because of this, the engines were almost never used. It took too long to heat them up, boil the water, create the steam and drive the engines to move the ships…and the engines weren’t nearly powerful enough, anyway. Why the Erebus and the Terror hadn’t been fitted out with proper maritime engines is unknown, but the end-result was the same: The engines, being underpowered and rarely used – were nothing but dead weight at the bottom of the ships, making already slow vessels even slower.
The Food
It’s long been believed that one of the main contributing factors to the disaster of the Franklin expedition was the food that the men ate during the voyage. The vast majority of it was canned. In theory, this was a good idea. Canned food is easy to store, easy to ration, takes up less space, is easier to cook and easier to serve.
But only if it’s done properly.
The cans of food and beverages used on the Franklin expedition were poorly sealed and the food was not properly prepared. This led to spoilage, leakage, and loss of nutritional value. The result? The men started suffering from the one disease that all seamen lived in mortal terror of: Scurvy, caused by a crippling lack of Vitamin C.
Scurvy had been the nightmare-fuel of sailors for hundreds of years, even before the Franklin expedition set out. In the 1700s, it was discovered that citrus juices could prevent scurvy, and to this end, the Royal Navy instituted a system whereby every sailor was given generous quantities of grog every day, to keep scurvy at bay. Grog was a mix of rum, watered down with lime or lemon-juice. This sweet-and-sour cocktail, a mix of booze and vitamins, kept sailors hydrated, healthy, and happy.
The canned provisions might’ve done as well, if they had been prepared properly. But apart from the lack of vitamin C, the canned food posed another great danger: Botulism. When food (especially meat) goes bad, the bacteria known as Clostridium Botulinum starts to form, which can lead to symptoms such as sight problems, speech problems and fatigue – all of which would be exacerbated by the freezing cold of the Arctic.
Navigational Issues
Another huge problem for the crew, apart from the shortcomings of their ships and the deficiencies in their provisions, was the much more unmanageable problem of dealing with navigation.
To find your way around the world in the 1840s, you needed three pieces of equipment: A sextant to tell you your latitude, or North-South position, a chronometer or clock, to tell you your longitude, or East-West position, and a compass, with which to give you your direction, or ‘heading’. Compasses are magnetic. They will always point towards the magnetic North Pole, which as we know, is populated by a fat guy in a red suit who runs the world’s largest toy factory!
The problem with magnetic compasses is that the Magnetic North Pole moves. A lot. The rotation of the Earth means that the pole is constantly shifting – more than once throughout the Earth’s history, the poles have flipped completely, and then flipped back again! In most latitudes, this isn’t an issue – the North Pole (ie: True North) is so far away that these slight variations in movement made by Magnetic North are imperceptible, and a general northerly bearing is usually sufficient to guide a ship along its route – if it needs a more accurate fix – well! – that’s what the chronometer and sextant are for!
But the problem is that the shifting poles and questionable compass readings get more and more extreme the further north or south you go. Right up in the Arctic Circle, with the pole moving all the time, the compasses get completely disoriented as they try to keep up with the shifting magnetism of the North Pole. The result?
The compasses don’t point north. They don’t, because they can’t, and they can’t, because they point to Magnetic North, which, as I said, is constantly moving. This leads to the very real problem of your compasses being completely useless. You can’t rely on them at all to point the way, and can only manage to do so by maps, stars and the position of the sun…if the sun will deign to rise, that is – in the Arctic Circle, that isn’t always guaranteed.
Along with faulty compass readings came the added strain of trying to navigate a seascape which had very few accurate charts. No complete maps of the Canadian Archipelago existed in the early 1800s, and for the first time since the search for Australia in the 1700s, mankind found itself quite literally sailing off the edge of the map.
This inability to rely on maps meant that every directional change the crew made would be a literal, and figurative – shot in the dark. They had no idea what lay ahead, or what to expect. Instead of sailing west, they sailed south. Instead of sailing east, they sailed west. Instead of trying to avoid the ice, the Erebus and the Terror found themselves trapped in endless floes which refused to melt for years on end!
Captain Sir John Franklin
The last factor which spelled doom for the Franklin Expedition was, arguably, Sir John Franklin himself. While he was an arctic veteran, a famous explorer, naval hero and man of letters who was immensely popular with the British public, and well-liked by his crew, Franklin did have a number of shortcomings that made him less than ideal for the mission at hand.
Sir John Barrow
Franklin’s unsuitability as expedition-leader is borne out by the fact that he wasn’t even the Admiralty’s first choice for leader! Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty, and the man in charge of finding the crew to man the expedition, had hoped to convince the elderly Sir John Ross to come out of retirement and head the expedition. Ross was a famous naval officer and arctic explorer of note, but he was already approaching old age, and had no desire to go to sea – especially on such a risky mission as this!
Admiral Sir John Ross
Barrow’s second choice was Sir James Clark Ross – Sir John’s equally-famous and well-accomplished nephew, another famous polar explorer! Unfortunately, Sir James had just gotten married, and, like his uncle, had no desire to go gallivanting off around the world at such short notice!…especially when he had far more interesting diversions waiting for him at home.
Barrow’s THIRD choice for commander was an Irishman named Francis Rawdon Crozier – another polar-exploration veteran of note. While Crozier was experienced, Barrow wanted an Englishman to head the expedition, and since his first two choices had bowed out and his third was not ideal, he finally settled on Sir John Franklin – Option #4!…Ouch!
Sir James Clark Ross, Sir John’s nephew, and a noted polar explorer in his own right
At 59, Franklin was already approaching old-age by Victorian standards. While he was a naval officer, and a polar explorer, and certainly had the intelligence to get himself admitted to the prestigious Royal Society, Franklin had many shortcomings as well. Although he was a popular hero, and was well-liked by the men under his command, whom he treated with kindness, consideration and respect, the fact of the matter was that Franklin was stubborn, hotheaded, took unnecessary risks, and didn’t always respond positively to well-meaning advice.
Captain Sir John Franklin, photographed in 1845 before his departure on the Erebus
All these faults led to his near-death in 1819, when he attempted an overland expedition from Canada to the Canadian Archipelago, to find the Northwest Passage by land. His foolhardiness and inattention led to eleven of his 20-man crew dying of cold and starvation. By the time they abandoned the mission and his men had convinced Franklin to turn back, the remaining men were close to death themselves. Franklin survived by literally cutting up and eating the leather uppers on his hiking boots! This humiliating end to what was supposed to be glorious victory of exploration, led to him being mercilessly lampooned as the “man who ate his own shoes”!
All these issues – the failings of the ships, the problems with the food, and nutrition and health of the crew, and the navigational challenges and uncertainties faced by the navigators aboard the two ships are what led to what was supposed to be the most well-equipped polar expedition in history, going down as one of the greatest exploratory failures of the Victorian era.
In the end, the first successful maritime navigation of the Northwest Passage took place in 1906 under the command of Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Unlike Franklin, Amundsen had the good sense to turn EAST when he reached King William Island instead of continuing south – and that made all the difference. By turning east, he was able to sail around the island and pop out the bottom. All the tiny islands north of him (through which the Franklin Expedition had attempted to sail) now worked in Amundsen’s favour, instead of against him, like with Franklin. The islands which formed the bottleneck of icebergs and field-ice that had so impeded the Franklin expedition, kept the waterways past Victoria Island relatively ice-free, allowing Amundsen a clear passage westwards towards the Pacific Ocean!
What Happened to Erebus and Terror?
Everything I’ve written about thusfar, has just about covered the various fates of the crew, but what about the ships that they left behind? The Erebus and the Terror. What happened to them?
Again, the only way to be sure of anything, is to go by Inuit testimony. The ships were known to be above ice throughout the 1840s, but by the early 1850s, were starting to fall victim to the crushing ice that had by now, surrounded them for years. The Terror succumbed first – carried south by the crushing ice, the ship finally broke apart and sank off the southwest coast of King William Island in an area now known as Terror Bay in honour of the lost ship.
The Erebus was marginally more successful – the pack-ice had drawn the ship south along with its sister-ship, but instead of crushing the ship to matchsticks, the ice thawed enough for it to start moving again, although it did not get very far.
In 2014 and 2016, the wrecks of the Erebus and the Terror (in that order) were discovered by Canadian maritime explorers. To protect their historical integrity, the exact location of the wrecks was (and still is) a closely guarded secret, so as to prevent recreational divers from attempting to find them. The British Government, the official owner of the two shipwrecks, gifted them to the Canadian government, which later entrusted the safekeeping and guarding of the wrecks to the Inuit people, through whose territory the two ships had tried to sail, all those years ago. Among the artifacts raised from the ships was the bell of the Erebus.
The President and the Expedition
The Lost Expedition of Sir John Franklin, and their noble quest to find the Northwest Passage, happened back in 1845, over 170 years ago, and yet, in the 21st century, one particularly poignant reminder of the expedition’s great peril remains with us still. It’s likely that you’ve seen it on TV. Several times, in fact. It’s likely that you’ve seen it in photographs, on the internet, on Youtube, in TV shows, and even in big-name Hollywood movies!
Even if it wasn’t what it is, it would still be an immensely famous artifact, and yet, this irreplaceable piece of history is quite literally overlooked, every single day, without most people realising even in the slightest – what it actually is.
What is this artifact, you ask?
The Resolute Desk in pride of place at the Oval Office in the Biden White House
The desk of the president of the United States of America.
Gifted to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 by Queen Victoria as a token of goodwill between the two nations of America and the United Kingdom, the desk – popularly known as the “Resolute Desk”, was made from the timbers of the British warship HMS Resolute, when it was broken up in the 1870s. The desk is one of three that were commissioned by Queen Victoria when the ship was finally scrapped. The other two are the “Grinnell Desk”, and a smaller ladies’ writing-desk, made for the queen herself.
The Resolute was one of the several ships which in the 1850s, sailed to the Arctic to try and find Franklin’s Lost Expedition. Had it not been for much better planning, the crew of the Resolute could’ve joined the crew of the Erebus and the Terror in their icy fate! When the Resolute got stuck in the ice, the crew decided to abandon ship, and sought refuge on an accompanying vessel which sailed them back to safety. Fearing that their ship would, like the Franklin ships, be crushed into matchsticks by the tons of ice and then sunk, they never expected to see it again. However, to everybody’s amazement, the ship broke free of the ice in the spring thaw, and drifted around the North Atlantic for years, before it was discovered by American whaling ships and sailed back to America.
The Plaque on the Resolute Desk
The ship was restored to full working condition, with replacement rigging, sails and flags, and was returned to the Royal Navy as a gesture of goodwill between the United States and the United Kingdom. Years later, the gesture was reciprocated in the giving of the Resolute Desk – which to this day, still bears a plaque on it detailing its role in the Franklin expedition.
Want to Read More?
For the sake of brevity, I haven’t covered everything about the Franklin Expedition in detail. If you want to find out more, here’s the sources I used…
The chilly winter air, the flurries of snow, the heaving, choking smog, the hissing, flickering luminescence of gas-fired streetlamps. Footsteps in the distance. Somewhere, a clock-tower chimes midnight.
Suddenly, a scrambling of feet! A struggle! The sound of a body falling, and the distant ‘splash!’ of something heavy hitting the water.
A moment of silence. And then the crisp midnight air is sliced in half with the shrill, discordant screeching sound of a whistle…
The Victorian era was obsessed with four things: Crime, death, standardisation, and modernisation. In sixty years, technology advanced by leaps and bounds unheard of in previous lifetimes, and one object encapsulated all these things in one – one of the most iconic items associated with the Victorian era: The humble Metropolitan Police Whistle.
The Origins of the London Metropolitan Police
Established by Sir Robert Peel in 1829, the “New Police” or to give it its proper title: The London Metropolitan Police, was the world’s first modern police force – a state-run organisation of paid, professional officers, designed specifically to detect, deter, and solve crimes.
Prior to this time, ‘policing’ was often carried out by the civic guard, soldiers, parish constables, or the night watch, as in Rembrandt Van Rjin’s famous painting…
“De Nachtwacht” (“The Night Watch”) by Rembrandt Van Rjin
Here, you can see the men of the night watch, armed and protected with pikes and halberds (in the background), helmets, and muzzle-loading muskets (on the left and right).
The whole concept of the police was so new that Peel wasn’t even sure how it was supposed to operate. For example, police were originally expected to be on duty at all times, and to wear their uniform at all times. Then they changed it so that an armband on the sleeve of the uniform indicated whether the officer was, or was not, on duty. Finally, they decided that officers would only be on duty when they wore their uniforms, and did not have to wear them when they were not on duty!…things were very confusing! And it only got even more confusing when they actually had to fight crimes in progress.
The new London police service patrolled the streets day and night, working in timed shifts which covered specific quarters of the city (known as ‘beats’). If a policeman did one thing more than any other – it was walking. In the days before telephones and emergency-service numbers, a physical, visible police presence on the streets was the best way to detect and deter crime.
But what happened when crime was detected? A constable might try and combat the criminal himself, but if this wasn’t possible, then he would need to call for backup. This was usually done by beating his truncheon against fence-railings or along the pavement, or by swinging a heavy, wooden rattle round and round and round. The blades of the rattle snapped and clapped back and forth along the ratchet inside, making an almighty racket!
The problem was that the rattle was bulky, difficult to carry, heavy (it had to be large enough to make a loud-enough noise to be heard over the traffic, don’t forget), and it could easily be taken by a criminal and used as a club to attack the officer, if he so desired. On top of that, despite the rattle’s size and weight, it was not always distinguishable over the sounds of a busy city – thousands of pedestrians, horses, carriage wheels, market cries and the sounds of industry could easily drown it out.
This was why, in the 1880s, the police, finally fed-up with this inefficiency, decided to rethink the equipment issued to constables on the beat.
Enter a man named Joseph Hudson.
Joseph Hudson & Co – Whistle Makers
Joseph Hudson was a Birmingham toolmaker and whistle-manufacturer who had established his business in 1870. Moderately successful, Hudson was quick to see that what the police needed was not a heavy, bulky rattle, but something small, lightweight, easy to carry, and which could produce a deafening noise!…They needed whistles! And by gum, he was going to be the fellow who was going to provide them!
A competition was announced in the London Times newspaper, and competitors were encouraged to submit their entries, which would be compared and tested. Hudson started manufacturing his whistle, trying to find a design which would be loud, distinct, and portable. The story is often told that he got the idea for how the whistle should sound when he knocked his violin off his workbench. The twanging, reverberating strings gave him the idea that the whistle should be two-toned – one blow by the user should produce two different notes. Combined, they would not only be louder, but also very distinctive – anybody hearing the whistle would know at once that it was a police whistle.
The Original Metropolitan Police Whistle
Hudson’s whistle performed admirably in tests conducted by the police. It was loud, had a long audible range, was compact, lightweight, robust, and distinct. The police liked it so much that they asked Mr. Hudson to start manufacturing these new whistles at once! Joseph Hudson was so eager to fulfill his enormous new contract that a lot of the earliest whistles came with manufacturing faults, and had to be sent back to the factory for repairs – awkward…
The whistle and its chain
But eventually, they got the manufacturing processes and quality-control up to snuff, and in 1883, the London Metropolitan Police started carrying the new whistles. Rattles were to be handed in as soon as possible, and the new whistle was to be introduced to the force to replace it. Originally, the whistle was hooked onto the uniform tunic with a chain, and the whistle hung straight down the front. This proved to be less than ideal – the whistle and chain would flop around if the officer had to engage in a foot-pursuit, or a suspect could grab the whistle and pull it away from the officer.
Later, police regulations were changed so that the whistle was stored in the breast-pocket of the uniform tunic, with the chain-hook going through the buttonhole of the nearest available button. The chain hung out of the pocket in a “U” shape. This arrangement allowed for inspectors to see that their officers were carrying their whistles, while also keeping them out of sight. The hanging chain also made it easy for the officer to pull his whistle out quickly in an emergency, but wasn’t so long that a suspect could grab hold of the chain during a scuffle. This arrangement is still used today with police dress-uniforms.
The hook at the end of the whistle-chain
Police whistles were largely made of either nickel-silver, a nickel-alloy, or else were made of brass, and later plated in nickel. Which whistles were made of which material changed over time, depending on which metal was more available.
During the First World War, for example, J. Hudson & Co. actually had to make its whistles out of steel (donated by the Cadbury Chocolate Co. workers over in Bournville!) because the British government decreed that brass (the usual whistle-material) was required for the war-effort! But nobody needed the steel used to make chocolate-boxes and biscuit-tins, so it was used to make whistles, instead!
Dating Antique Police Whistles
As police whistles started becoming more and more popular, both in London and then further afield in the UK, and then around the world, mostly following the British model, manufacturers rushed to meet the demand. Other industries such as railroads, insane asylums, prisons, and countless other institutions and organisations suddenly realised how useful whistles could be, and they too, started putting in orders.
The earliest Metropolitan police whistles, as made by J. Hudson & Co., were produced in the company’s factory on 84 Buckingham Street, in Birmingham, starting in 1883. Within two years, demand was vastly outstripping supply, and Joseph Hudson was forced to close his original factory, and move to larger premises at 131 Barr Street, in 1884-85.
Even as the company moved manufacturing facilities, it also changed manufacturing processes, styling, stamps, and marks. This is what makes antique whistles so easy to date. Knowing how long and between what dates a company remained at a particular address helps you to date when a whistle was made.
The address of 131 Barr Street, on the whistle barrel
While changes in barrel markings and addresses can give you a date-range for when the whistle was made, more subtle changes in the whistle’s manufacturing can help to narrow down the date to an actual year. Variables such as the shape of the loop on the top of the whistle, the shape of the mouthpiece, and even the style and spacing of the branding-stamps on the barrels all changed over time as manufacturing techniques changed or improved. This is how it was possible to date this particular whistle to 1887!
How were the Whistles Used?
So far, I’ve covered why the whistles were created, what they were made of, and how they were dated, but how were they used?
The whole purpose of the whistles, like the rattles which they replaced, was to raise the alarm and call for assistance. In Victorian times, the only way for the police to respond to crime was to literally be there on the spot when it happened. There was no such thing as telephone or police radios in those days. Officers walked beats (timed patrol-routes) around their city, town or village, usually in shifts of one hour, after which they could return to the station-house for a break, a drink, a rest, and either go back out on patrol, or go home, if their shift had ended.
While out on the road, officers had no way of communicating with each other. If they spotted a crime in progress – a mugging, burglary, theft or even a murder – it was up to the officer on the scene to take charge of the situation. If the situation was more than he could handle, or if it suddenly went out of control – that’s what the whistle was for. Blowing the whistle as long and loud as you could would alert other officers on nearby beats that immediate assistance was required, and they would respond by rushing in the direction of the last whistle blast.
In this way, the whistle acted as both an instrument for calling backup, and as a siren, to alert people to what was going on. It also acted as a physical marker, so that people could hurry to the location where a policeman needed assistance, by following the sound of the whistle.
Police whistles remained in regular use from the 1880s up until the 1970s, when factors like improved portable communications devices, cars, and better electronics finally rendered them obsolete. They’re manufactured today largely for tourists, collectors, police dress-uniforms, and for historical reenactments or as movie- or television-props.
Collecting antique police whistles is a big hobby, and high prices can be paid for whistles which are particularly old, or which have rare stamps on the barrels, indicating that they were manufactured for, or issued to, different police forces or organisations.
Of the original J. Hudson whistles, probably the rarest or most collectible are the first-generation ones marked “84 Buckingham St.” on the barrels, because these were only made for two years. Even rarer than that are the handful of whistles from this time with even rarer markings on them. Rarer, because they were manufactured specifically for the various lunatic asylums around the UK at the time, and bear markings of the asylums to which they were issued. These whistles are among the most expensive, costing several hundred or even thousands of dollars each.
The second generation whistles, from the 1880s and 1890s, such as the one featured in this posting, are a little easier to find, although they are a bit more expensive than the average price for an antique whistle, due to their age.
I hope you found this glimpse into the history of whistles interesting. More postings along a similar theme are planned for the future, so keep an eye out for them!
In this posting, we’ll be looking at the birth of the ‘Golden Age of Travel’, and exploring how the changes and innovations made to transport and communications during the 19th century, gave birth to the first great age of travel and tourism. We’ll be looking at what tourism and travel was like when it first became available to ordinary people, how the tourist experience differed between then and now, and what we might have lost and gained during the journey.
‘The Golden Age of
Travel’ is defined as the era from the second half of the 1800s up to the
early 1940s, when cheap international travel and the tourist trade really
started taking off, thanks to technological and transport advances made during
the Industrial Revolution. It was an age of wonder and excitement, and was the
first time that ordinary people were able to travel in style, speed, safety,
and comfort. It was also the first time when people could travel strictly for
pleasure at reasonable prices.
The Second World War, and the subsequent geographical,
technological and political changes which it forced, irreversibly changed the tourist
landscape, making the difference in the travel-experience between the first and
second half of the 20th century almost as different as night and
day.
The changes brought about by the War made it impossible to
return to the elegance, excitement, wonder and grandeur of the pre-war travel experience
– it’s something which exists only as a ghost, which lingers in old
photographs, antique luggage, hotel and steamship-tickets and the stamp marks
found in fading passports. So what was it really like? What was travel and tourism
like before and after the War? How did pre-war travel differ from post-war
travel, and how did post-war travel morph into what we know today? In this
issue, we’ll find out together, on our very own tour through history!
So stamp your passport and clip your tickets. Strap down
your trunks and hold onto your Baedekers. We’re about to take a trip back into
history. Our ancestors may not have been jetsetters, but they were
globetrotters, who still managed to explore the world in a haze of smoke, steam
and gasoline. A flag waves, a whistle blows. It’s time now to depart! All
aboard!
Before the Golden Age of Travel
For much of history, travel was slow, boring, painful,
expensive and dangerous. People rarely travelled any great distance unless it
was absolutely necessary, and almost never for pleasure. It was not uncommon
for people to be born, live, and die all within the confines of the communities
of their birth, or within a very few miles thereof. Travel meant days and weeks
on the road. It meant needing money to pay for bed and board, it meant having
to guard yourself against those who would wish you harm in any number of ways. Thieves
and robbers on the public roads also meant that you were restricted in your
travel, largely to daylight hours when it was easier to protect yourself. This
limited your travel-time each day, and made travel even slower. And this if you
were poor. If you were rich, travel was slightly easier, but still not without
considerable risks.
Even if you had the money to allow for travels, and even if
you did travel for pleasure, the journey was still slow, costly and potentially
dangerous. Money had to be paid for coachmen, horses, carriages, food and
lodgings, and servants. And there was the constant danger of being attacked
during your journey. Travelling ‘in style’ told every highwayman along your
route that you were rich, and that attacking and robbing you would likely gain
a highwayman rich rewards for his efforts. This put you in just as much danger
of assault and even death, as someone who had almost no money at all. And the
manner of your travel did not change these odds at all.
For most people, travel meant walking. And walking was
slow. Walking made you vulnerable. Walking along a country road, or through a
town, city or village left you open to all manner of dangers – cutpurses,
footpads, pickpockets, muggers, rapists, beggars, robbers and thieves who would
all do their level best to relieve you of your worldly possessions. But for
most people, this was the only way to travel from A to B – horses were
expensive to keep, feed and maintain. And only the wealthy could afford
carriages. And even those were not as safe as one might think.
Travelling in the relative speed and comfort of a private carriage or stagecoach did not guarantee you protection. Coaches or carriages which ran regular routes, and even private carriages running along busy Highways, risked being held up. Highwaymen created roadblocks to hold up coaches and force them to stop. Once a carriage was stopped, they could rob its passengers of their valuables and money, and even kill them if they wished. Famous highwaymen made names for themselves, like Dick Turpin, who was a notorious outlaw in Georgian-era England.
Before railroads, one of the fastest ways to move around was by mail-coach, which ran regular overland routes between major cities, delivering mail.
If you wanted protection on long journeys, you had to
either bring your own weapons and know how to use them, or else pay for armed
coach guards, who protected you with swords and loaded blunderbusses, or later,
shotguns. To this day, sitting in the front passenger-seat of a motor-vehicle
is still called “riding shotgun” – an allusion to the armed coach guard who
would sit next to the driver of a stagecoach, to provide armed protection in
the event of a holdup.
For all these reasons and more, for much of history, most
people did not travel great distances. And if they did, it was rarely for
pleasure, but mostly out of necessity – to escape disease, danger, poverty, a
troubled home life, or to find employment or other business related reasons.
What were the changes that happened in society and technology that allowed
people – ordinary people – to travel for pleasure for the first time in their
lives? And what was it like to travel and go on a vacation during this first
great age of travel? What allowed this to happen?
The Birth of Mass Transport
Widespread travel for pleasure would not be possible
without a corresponding development of means of cost-effective mass transport.
Spurred on by the Industrial Revolution, the second half of the 19th
century, saw efficient, cheap mass-transport becoming a reality, and for the 19th
century, and the first half of the 20th century, efficient, cheap
transport was symbolized by two great new inventions of the age: The
steam-powered locomotive, and the steam-powered, ocean-going passenger-ship –
the ocean liner! Where did these machines come from, and how did they change
the world?
Steam Boats & Steam
Trains
The two vehicles which would allow for the movement of
large numbers of people with ease and economy were both invented in the early
1800s. By the start of the Victorian era, the first passenger ships and
locomotives powered entirely by steam were plying trade around the world.
Locomotives and steamships both originated in England, and it was this steam-powered
transport technology that gave birth to the modern travel industry.
Conflicts during the 19th century such as the
Crimean War, the Chinese Opium Wars, the American Civil War, and the Franco-Prussian
War of the 1870s were the conflicts that laid the groundwork for the expansion
and improvement of steam technology. Expansion of railroad networks caused by
the need for rapid troop movements now allowed for swift, efficient movement of
civilian passengers.
Advances in steamship technology for wartime uses now
allowed for faster, safer and more comfortable ocean travel in peacetime. No
more was it about sleeping in hammocks on rocky, creaky, cramped sailing ships
that relied on the wind and weather. Now you could steam across the Atlantic or
the Pacific in a berth, or a cabin of your own, in comfort and style, lulled to
sleep by the throbbing of the powerful steam-pistons deep beneath the ship,
that turned paddle-wheels, and later, screw-propellers, which drove great
vessels across the ocean at speed.
No more was travelling by train a smoky, dusty, sooty
experience, full of coughing and gasping for air in uncomfortable, windswept,
open-topped carriages; now you could travel on a train with enclosed, corridor
carriages with separate day-compartments, or if the journey was an overnight
ride, in the relative comfort of a sleeper-car. If you found yourself hungry or
thirsty, dining-cars and kitchen-cars provided you with food. If you wanted
somewhere to relax, the lounge-car provided you with comfortable seating and
bright lights to read, write, smoke, or chat with friends on the journey.
By the late 1800s, travel was safer, faster, cheaper and
far more comfortable than lurching around inside a horse-drawn carriage with
little suspension. It was also open to a wider range of people. You paid a
ticket according to your means. First Class, Second Class, Third Class, or on
ocean crossings – Steerage. ‘Steerage Class’ on ocean liners got its name from
the fact that third-class passengers were often housed at the back of the ship,
and deep in the hull, in the smallest cabins, the closest to the ship’s
engines, power generators and steerage mechanisms. First- and Second-Class
passengers got cabins on the upper decks, with the bright sea-views, away from
the throb and rumble of the engines.
Motorised Transport
Along with steam-powered transport, the rise of cheap,
personal and public motor-vehicles in the early 1900s also contributed to the
Golden Age of Travel. Vehicles like motorcars, motorcycles and buses freed
people from the restrictions of train and streetcar timetables, allowing them
to make the best and most use of their free time. Planning trips and holidays
around the country or continent became much easier and faster when each person
or family had their own vehicle with which to travel in, which was not
dependent on such variables as horses, timetables or weather, and which was
much faster and more comfortable than previous methods of transport.
Cheap cars for the ordinary middle-class worker such as the
Model T and Model A Fords in the United States, the Austin 7 in England, and
the Volkswagen ‘Beetle’ in Germany meant that more people could go more places,
and weekend drives to explore locations previously impractically far from home
could now be accomplished in a few hours. Trips to the country or to other
cities and towns were now easy and simple. And a car was easier to maintain and
faster to start than a horse and carriage!
The Birth of the Golden Age of Travel
Along with steam-powered transport, the rise of more
personal transport also contributed to the birth of the Golden Age of Travel.
Starting in 1885, you had the world’s first modern bicycles, and increasingly
as the Victorian era came to an end, the rise of the motorcar. Able to take
people places that the railroads could not reach, these two inventions further
improved people’s ability to travel and explore. This led to an increase and
improvement of road networks.
Travelling around the country and going from city to city –
road-trips – became popular. Rest stops, motels and diners popped up around the
United States. The famous “Route 66”
in the United States stretched from Chicago, Illinois all the way to Los
Angeles, California, passing through many cities and states on the way, making
it a popular road-trip and an easy way to visit many famous cities and towns
along your tour of the American interior.
With the infrastructure for safe, speedy, comfortable and cost-effective mass transport now in place, and social changes such as the rise of the five-day working week, it was now possible for people to take time off, and time away from home and work, and to start travelling and go on holiday for the first time in history. The Golden Age of Travel had begun!
The Cunard Line advertising travel to all parts of the world! The ship illustrated in the poster is the RMS Aquitania.
Now, it was easy to travel to such places as the
countryside, the beach, the bay, or to take day trips into town to go window shopping,
to buy gifts, necessities for the house, or to explore cities and towns far
from home. It was possible to live far from the city in a new, quiet suburb and
commute into town. Journeys that might once have taken days or weeks could now
be done in hours or minutes. The amount of free time available to people was
beginning to grow. Holidays became popular, with more people getting time off
work. People with time off work and money to spend wanted to go travelling, and
the number of exciting destinations to visit was growing, catering to all
levels of tourist, as were the ways to get there, and places to stay, once you
arrived.
As the 20th century progressed, travel became faster still. With the opening of the Suez (1869) and Panama (1914) Canals, long detours around the horns of Africa and South America were eliminated for all but the largest of ships, slicing days off of voyages to Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the coastal cities of the United States.
The White Star Line advertising travel to the New World on its two most famous ocean liners, The Olympic and the Titanic, ca. 1911.
To lure people away from their homes to far flung
destinations, travel agencies, railroad companies and shipping lines produced
vivid, colourful posters advertising luxurious travel to the edges of the world
in fast, sumptuously appointed ocean liners and railroad-carriages, fast
connecting trains and short crossings; anything to part a potential traveler
from his living-room, and the money from his wallet.
Steamships of all sizes now plied the oceans, seas and
rivers of the world. No longer was sailing from England to the Continent
(Europe) a dangerous, costly endeavor. Now, you could buy a ticket. You could
get on a ferry and in steam-powered speed and comfort, take a trip across the
English Channel to France. With rail-links around Europe, cities like Paris,
Berlin, Rome, Milan, Venice and Pompeii became great tourist attractions which
were easily accessible thanks to efficient public transport services from the
port cities of France, Denmark, Germany and Italy. People could travel all over
Europe, America, and Asia, in speed, comfort and safety for the first time in
history. All this was what contributed to the birth of the Golden Age of
Travel.
Packing for a New Age
As the 19th century progressed into the 20th
century, travel became cheaper still. After the hell of the First World War,
the United States of America tightened its once open door policy on
immigration. No longer were shiploads of poor European refugees allowed to be
dumped on Ellis Island for large-scale processing. The ending of this policy in
1924, and the subsequent introduction of immigration quotas (which allowed only
a set number of people from different countries or backgrounds to migrate each
year to specific countries) meant that steamship companies, which had once made
thousands of pounds and dollars a year in the immigrant trade, suddenly had
their main passenger base swept out from under them!
In the new, optimistic age of the “Roaring” 1920s, a
solution had to be found! The answer was ‘Tourist
Class’. Ships no longer transported human cargo from A to B. They now
transported fare-paying passengers, or ‘tourists’
in comfort, from their home ports to destinations far and wide around the
world, for a reasonable price. Cheap tickets were snapped up by eager
holidaymakers with free time on their hands, and international, ocean going
travel began!
Travelling by ocean liner to cities and countries all over
the world often meant long sea-voyages! Very long! London to Paris might take half
a day by steamer and rail. London to New York might take a week or more.
Melbourne to Singapore might take three or four days. But it was for the
mammoth, long-haul voyages, such as those from Naples to Shanghai (eight weeks
by steamer!) for which a whole new kind of luggage was required!
These days, we have check-in luggage and carry-on luggage,
and it’s all weighed and measured and assessed and tagged. You can only have
10kg carry-on and 40kg check-in and if you want more you have to pay for more,
and you have to repack, redistribute and reorganize everything over and over
again, so that the plane doesn’t crash into the ocean and sometimes you wonder
whether going on holiday is even worth it?
Packing for a long voyage during the Golden Age of Travel
was just as challenging, although those challenges were of a rather different
nature. One benefit of travelling by steamship was that there weren’t really
any luggage weight restrictions. So long as it fit in the hold, or in your
cabin or suite on board ship, you were fine. But even for short holidays, you
often brought mountains of luggage. Remember that you did not go on ‘holiday’
or ‘vacation’, you went on ‘tour’ –
hence ‘tourist’.
You expected to be away from home for days and weeks at a
time – and that might be just the ocean voyage, before you even reached your
destination! And having spent days and weeks at sea, you weren’t going to spend
just a couple of weeks at your destination and then sail for days and weeks,
all the way back home again! You expected to be away for a long, long time. A
month or more, at least! So the kind of luggage that our grandparents and
great-grandparents brought with them on their epic journeys was significantly
different from what we would pack and carry today. So, exactly what kind of luggage
would you expect to bring on a long ocean voyage?
The Steamer Trunk
The mainstay of luggage for most of the 20th century, and indeed, for most of history, was the trunk – large, wooden boxes into which everything you might require for a long voyage was packed. Considering that an ocean voyage to any destination could take anywhere from a few days to a few months, such large personal storage space was deemed necessary to fit in all the clothing, accessories and other related travel paraphernalia that might be required for a long time spent at sea.
Antique steamer trunk, complete with brass hardware and locks
Trunks were designed to be tough. They had to withstand being hoisted by cranes, roped up in nets, and being stacked up, lashed down, and rocked around at sea. They had to put up with rough train rides, carriage journeys, motor trips, being dragged around and shunted from place to place by porters, bellhops and stewards. To protect against damage, they were reinforced with wooden ribs and braces. This was to prevent cracking and warping from the weight of extra luggage stacked on top.
Rivets and studs were hammered into corners and joints to
strengthen them. Exposed wooden parts of trunks were varnished to prevent
wood-rot, or were lined on their exteriors with leather or canvas to provide a
weatherproof finish. Corners were again reinforced with brass plates which were
again, riveted on, to prevent damage from abrasion and rough handling. Catches,
locks and clasps were made of brass. This made the trunks all pretty and
attractive, but it also came with an added bonus – unlike steel, brass does not
rust, so provided further protection against the moisture and corrosion of
seawater.
The Suitcase
These days, most people pack their clothes and belongings into roll-on cabin-baggage when they go travelling. The days of the actual ‘suitcase’ are steadily disappearing. But there was a time when people who went on holiday carried suitcases, and these cases actually contained the suits which provided them with their names.
A typical suitcase of the Golden Age of Travel, from the
late 1800s through the early 20th century was made of leather or
canvas. It came with two lockable clasps to hold it shut, and depending on the
style, may or may not have come with additional leather belts that were
strapped over the suitcase. These belts provided a failsafe mechanism if the
clasps were broken, but the belts (which wrapped around the entire suitcase)
could also be removed from the belt loops around the suitcase and linked
together. They could then be used to strap the suitcase on top of other
suitcases or luggage, to keep them together, or to secure them to the roof or
luggage-rack of a motorcar or horse-carriage during transport, if other storage
space was not available.
The Gladstone Bag
Sturdy, of large capacity, secure and easy to carry,
Gladstone bags were the backpacks of their day. Everyone who travelled anywhere
on a regular basis was likely to have at least one of these, and like
backpacks, the humble Gladstone was used to carry as wide a range of items as
you could possibly imagine.
The Gladstone was invented by a London bag-maker in the 1800s and named after globetrotting British prime-minister William Ewart Gladstone. It was immediately popular because of its large capacity, and secure, gate-mouth opening. Reinforced with a metal frame, the bag could be opened, and remain open while it was packed. This made it ideal as an overnight-bag into which anything could be packed with haste.
Vintage leather gladstone bag
Once packed, the bag was closed, locked, and then simply
carried away. No consideration had to be given to how the bag’s contents might
shift upon movement, since it did not have to be tipped onto its side to grasp
the handle, unlike a suitcase.
This was likely the reason why this style of bag was so
popular with physicians, who commonly carried sharp, dangerous and breakable
objects in their medical-kits, which were likely to be broken if they shifted
unexpectedly inside a backpack or other type of luggage. The gate-mouth opening
also meant that a doctor’s hands were free to dive in and out of the bag to
retrieve whatever instruments and medicines might be required in an emergency,
without having to constantly pull the bag open over and over again.
The Portmanteau
‘Portmanteau’ is a French loanword for a type of luggage which has all but disappeared from travel in the 21st century. You never see these things anymore unless they’re in museums or in period movies and TV-shows.
A Louis Vuitton portmanteau, or wardrobe trunk
Literally meaning “Coat-Carrier” (‘porte’ as in ‘portable’, and ‘manteau’ meaning ‘coat’), or also called a ‘wardrobe trunk’, this style of trunk was used for carrying your more expensive clothes – your best dresses, favourite suits, your dinner suit or your white tie and tails. It was stood on one end, and then opened up, looking for all intents and purposes, like a portable closet, complete with hanger-rack and separate drawers and compartments for shoes, shirts, trousers, socks, underwear and space for coats, trousers and jackets so that they wouldn’t get crushed during long journeys.
Portable
Word-Processing – Vintage Style
Then, just as now, our globetrotting forebears often wished
to keep some sort of record of their travels, or wished to inform others of
their travels. Or had a need to communicate and write to others during their
travels.
If we had to do this today, we’d bring along an iPad or a
laptop computer and seek out the nearest establishment boasting free WIFI. And
in their own way, our grandparents and great-grandparents had their own methods
for keeping in touch and connected with others.
The Writing Slope
The reservoir pen which could be carried around in your pocket, and used anytime, anyplace, anywhere, at a second’s notice, is a relatively recent invention. If you went travelling any time before 1900 and you needed to write while away from your desk, chances are that you probably had one of these things packed in amongst your trunks, boxes and cases:
Antique writing-slope manufactured by Toulmin & Gale of London, ca. 1863
Writing-slopes were the laptop computers of their day. They
carried everything that you required for on-the-move communications: Ink, pens,
paper, stamps, sealing-wax, seals, spare nibs, matches, envelopes, pencils,
paper-knife, eraser, paper-folder, and storage for money, letters, important
documents and valuables. The writing box or writing-slope shown here is typical
of the more expensive, up-market writing-slopes of the 1800s. It comes complete
with desk accessories in elephant-tusk ivory, inset matchbox and inkwell, and an
automatic deadlock security system (and the original key!).
Half-closing the writing-box exposes three,
flat ivory panels, or an ‘Aide Memoir’. Here, simple notes and reminders could
be scrawled on the ivory slates in graphite pencil. They could be erased using
a moist cloth, and the ivory could be reused.
Writing boxes were common travelling companions of the
educated globetrotter or travelling businessman of the 19th century.
They died out at the turn of the century when they were replaced by fountain
pens, and by yet another common piece of luggage which might be brought with
you on a long voyage during the early 20th century.
The Portable Typewriter
Invented in the 1870s, early typewriters were bulky, heavy things. Weighing up to 15-20kg (about 30lbs+), they were impractical as portable writing machines. As travel increased towards the end of the 19th century, and as typewriters became better designed and more commonplace, a market was realized: Portable typewriters would surely prove popular with the travelling public, if only such a machine could be produced!
The first portable, laptop typewriters came out in the first decade of the 1900s, but their golden age started in the 1920s. Portable typewriters were manufactured by Remington, Royal, Underwood, Corona and countless other typewriter companies. They were snapped up by reporters, authors, journalists, travel writers and businessmen who often had to travel as part of their jobs, and needed to be able to correspond swiftly and neatly while on the road.
This Underwood Standard Portable from the second half of
the 1920s was typical of the portable typewriters carried around the world by
tourists and writers during the Golden Age of Travel. Newspaper reports, story drafts,
letters home, business reports and magazine articles were all typed up on
machines like this and sent home across the seas by untold thousands of
writers, eager tourists, journalists and businessmen during the early 20th
century.
Oddments and
Accessories
Along with large pieces of luggage like suitcases,
Gladstone bags, trunks and portmanteaus, our globetrotting predecessors also
brought with them all manner of smaller boxes, bags and cases for holding
almost everything you could imagine. Shoeshine kits, collar-boxes, handbags,
hatboxes, stud-and-link boxes, and toiletry cases carrying everything from
straight-razors to talcum-powder.
Such large amounts of such small luggage were often packed inside trunks and suitcases, to separate and organize one’s belongings on long trips, but also to keep the items most commonly used closer to hand. Until the 1930s, men’s shirts came in general ‘one-size fits all’ style with longer sleeves, and without attached collars and cuffs (called ‘tunic shirts’). The separate collars and cuffs were stored in collar-boxes. The studs and links to attach these to the shirts were stored in jewellery cases.
As it would be impossible to store all of one’s belongings
into a ship’s cabin or berth, or on a railroad-carriage, only the trunks and
cases carrying the most essential items were stored close-at-hand. Clothes and
other belongings that would not be required until the ship or train reached its
destination would be stored in the hold, or in the luggage vans coupled to the
backs of trains.
Classic Luggage
Stickers
Hotel chains as we know them today did not exist in the
early 20th century. Every hotel in town was owned and operated
separately, and competition between them was fierce. Every hotel had to be
grand, classy, have a catchy and elegant sounding name, and have everything
that the guest might desire. Hotels that wanted to stand out had everything
custom made. Everything from the stationery, silverware, glassware, china and
towels were emblazoned with the hotel’s monogram or logo. And of course, every
hotel had to have its own distinct and immediately recognizable set of stylish
and colourful luggage-stickers.
Luggage stickers were once like tattoos – unique,
colourful, and evidence of a varied and well-travelled past. Just like how
sailors who went to sea came back festooned with ink, a steamer-trunk, set of
suitcases or a well-travelled Gladstone bag often returned home plastered from
lid to base in stickers. Stickers came from almost anywhere and everywhere:
from train stations, stickers from shipping companies, and stickers from
hotels.
Stickers contained information such as the name of a
trunk’s owner, his room number, the train which he had taken, or the name of
the ship he had boarded. And if he had boarded a ship, then the sticker might
also have his deck and cabin number. If he was on a long train journey and his luggage
was stored in the goods-van at the back of the train, his trunk sticker might have
his carriage or compartment number.
Today, luggage-stickers are just ugly, black-and-white barcoded,
print-out, rip-off, stick-on-and-done affairs. As soon as you arrive at your
destination, it’s immediately your mission to remove these stickers as soon as
possible, lest their blandness offend the eyes and sensibilities of the
delicate. On the other hand, vintage luggage stickers were works of art. They
often had bold letters in artistic fonts and colours which spelt out the hotel
name, the ship name, the city or port where the sticker was plastered on, and
came with decorative pictures or photographs as part of the design. They were
like miniature travel posters in their own right and passengers often kept the
stickers on their luggage as proof of their travels, and as proof of the extent
of their travel. And also because it gave their luggage ‘character’, with the
various stickers creating a rainbow patchwork of paper on the bland leather
surfaces of their cases and trunks.
Hotels During the Golden Age of Travel
The rise in the frequency of travel from the late 1800s to the start of the Second World War saw a corresponding rise in the number of hotels. A number of the world’s most famous hotels trace their roots back to this first great age of tourism. In the United States, the Stanley Hotel (1909) was opened by Freelan O. Stanley, co-owner of the famous Stanley Motor Carriage Co., which produced the well-known Stanley steam-powered automobiles of the 1900s-1920s. Notoriously haunted, it gave Stephen King the inspiration for one of his most famous horror novels: “The Shining”. Its guests included Titanic survivor Margaret Brown, musician J.P. Sousa, and President Theodore Roosevelt.
In New York City, the famous Plaza Hotel was opened in 1907. In London, the Langham and Grosvenor Hotels were opened in 1865 and 1862 respectively. The Ritz (1907) and the Savoy (1889) in London remain two of the most famous hotels in the world. In Singapore, Raffles Hotel opened in 1887. But as grand and famous as all these structures are, they all owe a debt to one hotel which has sadly faded into history, no longer operating, and which has been overshadowed by the fame of all the other hotels that have come after it.
The Plaza Hotel, New York City (opened 1907)
The Tremont Hotel, in Boston (closed 1895), one of several hotels named Tremont House or Tremont Hotel scattered around the United States (there were five in total) was the first hotel in the world as we would know them today, which offered amenities like lockable bedroom doors, indoor plumbing, indoor heated baths, indoor toilets, a proper reception area, and bellhops to carry the mountains of luggage mentioned earlier on. Opened in 1829, it predated many of the most famous hotels in the world which still operate, and paved the way for standards in hotel amenities and services which we take for granted today.
As the numbers of hotel guests started to climb as more
people found more time and more spare cash with which to travel, hotels started
competing with each other. To lure in more customers, they came up with more
and newer amenities, better service and furnishings, and all kinds of features
and extras which today are considered standards across the hotel industry. In
some respects, the service was also much better than what we might be used to
today.
These days, we arrive at the hotel and check in. Then, we’re
given our key-cards and told our room numbers and left to it, and that’s
basically it. In older times, when hotel competition was fierce, this level of
‘service’ was not always acceptable. Back when even a short journey meant
bringing a small cartload of luggage with you, the front-desk clerk would ring
the counter-bell (similar to the one shown above) to summon a youth who would
take your room key and some or all of your luggage, which he either carried
upstairs, or loaded onto a hotel luggage-trolley and took upstairs in an
elevator. This boy (they were traditionally young men) got his name from the
very bell used to summon him – ‘Bellhop’. Once at your room, he unlocked the
door for you, helped you carry in your luggage, handed you your key and then
left you to your thoughts.
A luxury hotel of the era would’ve come with such amenities
as a lobby, hotel restaurants, lounges, bars, and even a ballroom, where a
house orchestra or jazz-band would provide music which you could dance to, if
you wished. Hotels which had their own house-bands included the St. Francis
Hotel in San Francisco, the Savoy Hotel in London, the Hotel Pennsylvania in
New York, and Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Big names like Glenn Miller and Benny
Goodman would often broadcast live from the Pennsylvania Hotel at set times
each evening, for hotel guests to dance to, and for people at home to listen to
via radio.
Popular Tourist Destinations
During the Golden Age of Travel, from the late 1800s
through to the mid-20th century, a number of countries became
popular, famous, and even infamous destinations for the well-heeled
globetrotter of yesteryear. Countries like Canada, the United States, Cuba,
Mexico, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Spain, France, Scotland, Ireland, England,
Australia, India, the British Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, Japan and China
were all popular tourist spots. If you had the time and money, you might take a
whole year off, and visit all of them, going on a world tour.
Among the most popular travel destinations were those
considered ‘exotic’, such as Egypt, the Middle East, India, the Dutch East
Indies, the Straits Settlements, Japan, and one of the most famous of all: The
International Settlement of Shanghai.
The Shanghai
International Settlement
Shanghai, China’s most famous port city was a free port
from 1843-1943, one of several treaty-ports opened and developed by the British
after the Opium War of 1839. Anyone could go there and free trade was
encouraged, much like Singapore during the same era. Shanghai in the first half
of the 20th century, free from the ravages of war in Europe,
flourished. It was not only famous, it was notorious.
Tales abounded of gambling, prostitution, drug-trafficking
(mostly opium), giddy nightclubs with raucous jazz music, high living,
department stores, the Shanghai racetrack, grand ballrooms and luxurious
hotels. But Shanghai, for all its glitz and glamour, pulsing nightlife and
sheen of neon, also held a seedy underbelly reeking of gangland violence and
crime. The police fought riots, stabbings, shootings, kidnappings, rape and an
endless battle against the fierce underground opium trade. Shanghai was the
original Sin City.
Who wants to go to Shanghai?
Visiting Shanghai in the early 20th century was like visiting Las Vegas today. Its lurid reputation more than anything else, was its biggest draw card. And for the right price, any and all kinds of thrills could be had, if you knew where to look, and who to contact in the crime-infested underworld of the International Settlement.
The Bund of the International Settlement of Shanghai, 1926
One of the first views of Shanghai that you got was The Bund. The Bund, or raised embankment, was the main riverfront thoroughfare of pre-war Shanghai, then called the Shanghai International Settlement. Stretched out along the entire length of the Bund were banking houses, shipping offices, grand hotels, newspaper headquarters, upscale clubs, the Shanghai Customs House, and foreign consulates.
As your ship sailed up the Huangpu River and away from the Yangtze, this was your first view of the city – all its grandeur out on display like some gaudy jewellery-shop window display. The Bund ran the entire width of the British and French Concessions of Shanghai, from Suzhou Creek, and down the west bank of the Huangpu River. And the ships docked right there on the riverside. The moment you got off, you were plunged right into the heart of Old Shanghai. You had your choice of the two best hotels in town: The Palace Hotel, and the Cathay Hotel (which remain there still, along with all the other buildings, which are heritage protected, although the hotels have since been renamed).
The Palace Hotel (left), and the Cathay Hotel (right). Today, they are called the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, and the Fairmont Peace Hotel. In the old days, the Cathay Hotel was also called Sassoon House. Shanghai’s premier retail street, Nanking Road, runs between them.
Shanghai was so popular that in the United States, some
young men joined the United States Marine Corps (USMC) hoping to be posted to
the 4th Marine Regiment, also called the ‘China Marines’, because they were based in Shanghai, a city of
exotic and oriental wonder! Due to the city’s cheap labour and high standards
of living, even humble soldiers lived in relative luxury while deployed to
Shanghai. Here, their main tasks were protecting the boundaries of the city and
the American Concession, and enforcing the laws of the International
Settlement, although this second duty was also carried out by the multi-ethnic
Shanghai Municipal Police, whose job it was to enforce law and order within the
Settlement.
The SMP was originally largely British, but also included
Chinese, Indian, French, and American officers as well. In 1917, famous
American songwriter, Irving Berlin, wrote a now, almost-forgotten song called ‘From Here to Shanghai’, which spoke of
the singer’s longing to experience something more exotic than just a trip to
‘dreamy Chinatown’. 1922 saw the publication of ‘Goodbye, Shanghai’, and in 1924, one of the most famous jazz standards
of the day, ‘Shanghai Shuffle’ was
published, showing how popular this destination was among travelling Europeans
and Americans.
Travelling to Shanghai from Europe, or even America, took
several weeks. Most ships did not sail to most of their destinations directly.
Even the largest ocean liners didn’t do that. There was far more money to be
made by making regular stop-offs along the way, which at any rate, were
necessary to re-coal the ship, drop off mail and passengers, pick up more mail
and more passengers, restock the ship for the next leg of its voyage, and then
carry on. A ship sailing from England to China might stop at Cherbourg,
Casablanca, Marseille, Naples, Port Sa’id, Bombay, Singapore, Hong Kong, and
Tokyo before finally dropping anchor at its final destination: Shanghai. You
can see now, why such a trip would take up to two months to complete!
The Shanghai International Settlement went by many names.
‘The Paris of the East’, and ‘The Whore of the Orient’ were two of the most
common, reflecting both its ritzy, exotic nature, and its Devil-May-Care way of
life.
The Peking Legation
Quarter
For tourists wanting to visit the old capital of China (it
was moved to Nanking in 1927), you either caught a train from Shanghai to
Tientsin, and then to Peking, or else sailed to Tientsin directly and caught a
train from there. And while in Peking, you stayed at the famous Peking Legation
Quarter, at the Grand Hotel de Pekin, or the Grand Hotel Des Wagons Lits. The
Legation Quarter, like the International Settlement to the south, was the Western
expatriate enclave within a larger, Chinese city.
After the famous Siege of the Legations in 1900, the entire
compound was surrounded by walls and gates to protect it against possible
future uprisings, making it look like a walled city. The Grand Hotel Des Wagons
Lits was operated by the same company which ran the famous Orient Express, the
Compagnie Internationale Des Wagons Lits (“International
Sleeping-Car Company”). In Peking, just like in modern Beijing, chief
tourist destinations were the Great Wall, and the Forbidden City. After the end
of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the Forbidden City was opened to the public as the
Palace Museum in 1925, a position it has held ever since.
Singapore: The
Crossroads of the East
Another popular tourist stop was Singapore. Called ‘The
Crossroads of the East’, Singapore was ideally situated for a quick stopover on
your inspection of the South Pacific. A British colony since the 1810s,
Singapore was widely considered to be one of the nicest, grandest, most exotic,
and safest places in the world to have a holiday. After all, it had one of the
finest military airbases in Asia, as well as some of the best coastal
fortifications. For this reason, it was also proudly touted as the ‘Gibraltar
of the East’, as well.
The place to stay at while in Singapore was of course,
Raffles Hotel. Opened in 1887, Raffles has housed all manner of celebrities,
from Noel Coward to Rudyard Kipling and even British royalty. Raffles’ main
slogan in the early 20th century came from a review given by Kipling
in 1887, months after the hotel opened. Glowing with praise, Kipling had said:
“When in Singapore, feed at Raffles!”
– however, Raffles was careful not to publicise the rest of his review, which
continued: “…and sleep at the Hotel De L’Europe!”
– The Hotel De L’Europe was Raffles’ main competition in Singapore at the
time! Unlike the Hotel De L’Europe, however, Raffles survived the Great
Depression. The De L’Europe, by comparison, closed its doors in the mid-1930s
due to falling guest numbers.
As a free port and main stopover for ships plying the
passenger trade from Europe to Asia, Singapore boasted excellent shopping. A
visit to Orchard Road was almost mandatory, to seek out the latest oriental
wonders brought to the colony by ships sailing back from China and Japan.
Berlin: Cultural Center
of Europe
Despite the scourge of the Franco-Prussian War and the
First World War, during the late 1800s and early part of the 20th
century, the city of Berlin, Germany, was a popular tourist-spot for the
well-to-do. Renowned as a center of culture, art, music and politics, Berlin
attracted writers, journalists, politicians and famous actors.
Hotels like the Adlon became famous as haunts for foreign
newspaper-reporters and visiting VIPs. As the Hotel Adlon in particular was
(and still is) located in the governmental and diplomatic quarter of Berlin, it
was the ideal place to stay for journalists wishing to cover German politics.
Foreign embassies and the Reichstag were all nearby. Even today, the Russian
and British embassies in Berlin are located just a few blocks from this famous
hotel, which was rebuilt in the 1990s on its original location.
Before the scourge of Nazism in the mid-1930s, Berlin was
famous for its café culture, its jazz-music and its contributions to film and
theatre. European cabaret flourished in Germany during this period and
developed its own unique, raunchy humor in the nightclubs and taverns of
Berlin. The center of commercial and social life in Berlin was Potsdamer Platz,
one of the city’s main squares. Originally formed by the intersection of five
different roads, this large, open space was an ideal hub in the center town
from which almost anything could be reached. Grand hotels were built nearby,
the Potsdamer Platz railroad station was built near this location, and in 1897,
the Wetheim department-store was
opened near the square. By the 1920s, it was the largest department-store in
Europe.
The Nazi rise to power spelt the end to almost all of this.
Many of the actors and musicians were at least partially Jewish, and they fled
Germany in droves to escape persecution. Many of the actors in the famous 1942
film “Casablanca” were German,
Austrian or Czech Jewish refugees which had been actors in their
home-countries. They fled to America during the 1930s and reestablished
themselves in Hollywood, when it became clear that they could no-longer act in
Nazi-controlled countries. German cabaret, which had a strong focus on
political and social satire, was all but abolished by the Nazis.
Baedeker Guide Books
Any eager tourist heading off to far-flung destinations
today might consult TripAdvisor, or read up on their Lonely Planet guidebooks.
If you went anywhere during the Golden Age of Travel, most likely, you stopped
off at your local bookshop or travel agency, and asked to be shown their current
stock of ‘Baedekers’.
‘Baedeker’ was a German publishing house established in
1827. Throughout much of the 19th and the first half of the 20th
century, the Baedeker family became famous for printing guidebooks. Published
in German and English, ‘Baedekers’ covered everything from countries around the
world, to counties or states within countries, to cities and towns within
states, and could be remarkably detailed. From the mid-1850s, Baedeker guides,
which were regularly updated, covered countries all around the world. They
started being printed in English in 1861, when company founder, Karl Baedeker,
realized that for their firm to be successful, they had to appeal to as many
languages as possible.
Countries which had Baedeker guidebooks written about them
included: Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Palestine, Syria, Norway,
Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Mexico, Canada and the United
States! And that’s just from 1861-1900! Other countries that were included in
editions printed in the 20th century included Spain, Portugal,
Austria-Hungary, and Russia. Cities which earned their own guidebooks were
numerous, and extended from London, to Paris to Peking, in China!
Stop and consider for a minute what a challenge it would’ve
been to amass such a stockpile of information in an age before the internet.
Imagine having to write guidebooks on cities and countries thousands of miles
away, and having to rely on steam-post and electric telegraph for
communications. Imagine the effort and time it took to send people thousands of
miles away to far-off countries to research and gather this information.
Far-off countries? In 1914, Baedeker published its first guidebook (in German)
on the South Pacific, covering the British Straits Settlements (Malaya,
Singapore) and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). A journey from Germany to
Singapore took over a month by steamship!
An Ongoing Journey
The number of things that a person could say and write about this exciting and romanticised element and era of history are almost endless. I’ll be making another posting soon, about the three most famous vehicles of the Golden Age of Travel – the Hindenburg Airship, the Queen Mary, and the Orient Express!
Once upon a time, it was a common cry across the fairgrounds and carnivals of the world! A suited man in a top-hat and cane, bellowing through a big, shiny brass horn:
“Roll up! Roll up! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Come on, come all! See the Fat Boy, the Crab Family, the Lion Boy and the smallest man in the world! See the Elephant Man and the Limbless Wonder, the Rubber Man and the Teen Titan! Pay only a penny to gawp and ogle at these wonders of human perversion!”
But what was the reality of life in a circus sideshow? What did being a freak-show entertainer actually entail? In the 21st century, such entertainment is rare, but it still exists in one form or another, and most likely – it will always exist, because humankind has always had a fascination with the bizarre and the abnormal, the strange, the rare and the wonderful!
In modern times, freak shows tend to have an entirely negative perception by the general public, but was this always the case? In this posting, we’ll be exploring the reality of life ‘on the road’ as a traveling showman and as a freak show or sideshow attraction, as well as getting acquainted with some of the most famous sideshow acts in history!
What Is a Sideshow?
A sideshow was the name given to any secondary or side-act performed or exhibited at a fairground which was not part of the main event or main performances being held at the circus during the time of its stay. Sideshows could be anything from someone walking on coals to sword-swallowing, breathing fire or juggling any number or range of strange or even dangerous objects. Or, it could completely depart from the realm of ‘normal’ entertainment – and enter the realm of the freak show!
A ‘freak show’, as the name suggested, was a variety of ‘freaks’ who traveled with the circus as performers and exhibitors, displaying themselves for the amusement, shock, education or sometimes, just the sheer wonderment – of the paying public – and paying public, is the key here – if you wanted to see one of the freaks, or meet them, touch them, ask them questions or take photographs of them – you were obliged to pay them for it – this wasn’t some free exhibition! Displaying themselves to the public was their job, and like all employees, the freaks expected to be paid for their time and effort!
What is a Freak Show?
A freak show is similar to, but not the same as, a sideshow. A sideshow is any type of sideline attraction at a fairground. A freak show is a type of sideshow focusing on ‘freaks of nature’ – human beings which were in one way odd, different, strange or otherwise mentally or physically deformed or handicapped in one way or another.
How Long have Freak Shows Been Around?
Honestly? Probably since the dawn of time.
The modern idea of the ‘freak show’ dates back at least to the 1630s, and by the 18th century, traveling freaks (either individuals, pairs or small groups), who exhibited themselves at shows around Europe, started becoming common. It became common for freaks to entertain royalty and nobility, and from as early as the 1600s, the position of ‘Court Dwarf’ started to spread around Europe.
What is a Court Dwarf?
A court dwarf was a little person, or person who grew up with one of any of the many forms of dwarfism, who were employed by royal and imperial courts throughout Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, to act as entertainers and companions to the ruling monarch and their family. In a sense, these were the first type of ‘freak show’ to ever officially exist.
Count Jozef Boruwlaski. His walking-stick and hat (on the table) and his suit, are on exhibition at the Durham Town Hall in Durham, England, the town where he died.
Due to their rarity, dwarfs were actively traded among royal and princely families, and a dwarf could be given as a ‘gift’ from one ruler to another, as a sign of goodwill. Their unique appearance made court dwarfs very popular, and dwarfs often attained great wealth from the sizable stipends paid to them by the rulers whom they served. This practice lasted for over two hundred years, and the last official court dwarf was, Josef Boruwlaski, a Pole born in 1739. Although he had no official aristocratic title, his position as a Court Dwarf led to the nickname of ‘Count Jozef’.
Daniel Lambert. Weighing over 700lbs, he was the fattest man in recorded history at the turn of the 19th century.
A musician and entertainer, 3ft 3in ‘Count’ Jozef Boruwlaski died in 1837 at the impressive age of 97. He was most famous, in his day, for his meeting with Daniel Lambert – the 700-pound former prison-guard who was the fattest man in the world up to that point in recorded history. The official meeting of the world’s largest, and smallest men was reported widely in English newspapers at the time.
A statue of Count Jozef Boruwlaski, the ‘Durham Dwarf’ as he became known – the last official Court Dwarf in the world.
The Beginnings of Freak Shows
Count Boruwlaski and his contemporaries, such as Mr. Lambert, did exhibit themselves and did earn money from it. Indeed, ogling at Daniel Lambert’s gigantic obesity was highly fashionable in Georgian-era high-society…so fashionable in fact, that Lambert had to discontinue the practice, because it gave him absolutely no privacy!
However, the days of the court dwarf were numbered, and Boruwlaski is widely considered to be the last of his kind. He lived so long that he outlived all other court dwarfs, and after his death at the dawn of the Victorian era, the practice was discontinued. The death of the ‘Durham Dwarf’ effectively marked the end of one era of freak shows, and the beginning of another era – the professional, commercially-minded and enterprising freak-show operator and performer!
And for this, we must largely thank…one man. And that man is the incredibly flamboyant Mr. Phineas Taylor Barnum!…Better known as P.T. Barnum, arguably the most famous 19th century showman ever!
P.T. Barnum and the Greatest Show on Earth!
Born in 1810, Barnum’s actions basically gave rise to the world’s first official freak-show, as we might recognise it today. In 1841, Barnum purchased an old exhibition building on the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York City. Naming it “Barnum’s American Museum”, it served as a showcase for all the weird and wonderful things that he could find, with which to shock and amaze the paying public!
Not all of Barnum’s exhibits were entirely truthful – for example there was the “Feejee Mermaid” (a monkey and a fish sewn together!) or Joice Heth – purported to be the nursemaid of George Washington. Aged 161, Barnum passed her off as the “oldest living person in the world!”…when she died, an autopsy revealed that her age was closer to 80, rather than 160-odd.
But, in among the frauds and fakes, the half-truths and outright lies, Barnum’s American Museum did host some real and actual human oddities, and some of them became world-famous in their time! From the smallest man in the world to the dog-faced man, the lion boy and the camel woman, Barnum and his collection of freaks and sideshows shocked, wowed and amazed the public. In the 1840s, 50s and 60s, a good day out in the Big Apple was not considered to be complete without a visit to the museum.
Famous Freak Show Acts and Performers
One of the reasons we know so much about Victorian-era freak shows is because they were heavily promoted and advertised. There is a huge wealth of information out there documenting everything about them – photographs, advertising posters, postcards, newspaper articles, diary entries, and even biographies and autobiographies, written by the freaks themselves, or by the people who knew them.
So, who were these people, and what were their histories? Here, we’ll have a look at some of the most famous freak show attractions of all time.
NAME: Charles Sherwood Stratton. BIRTH-DEATH: 1838 – 1885. STAGE NAME: General Tom Thumb. CLAIM TO FAME: Smallest man in the world.
Born on the 4th of January, 1838, Charles S. Stratton is arguably the most famous circus freak who ever lived. He was also related to P.T. Barnum – they were distant cousins. When Barnum heard about his newborn cousin and his diminutive size, he couldn’t help but try to convince the boy’s parents that the child would be perfect for his American Museum. After working out a deal with Stratton’s parents, Barnum taught young Charles the elemental aspects of showbiz! Singing, dancing, how to be witty and smart and funny. Stratton’s father assisted with his son’s adjustment to the world of the circus, and accompanied Charles around, to aid in his adjustment.
Charles Stratton and his wife
Stratton became famous for impersonating famous ‘small people’ from history and mythology such as Napoleon Bonaparte, and Cupid, the baby angel of love. Once he’d started working at Barnum’s Museum, Charles Stratton was just four years old and was barely over two feet tall.
Stratton proved to be a natural comedian, and in 1856, when Stratton was eighteen, Barnum took him on their first European tour. By now, Stratton had attained the nickname of ‘General Tom Thumb’ and used this as his stage-name. Stratton’s popularity was astronomical, and he was soon more famous and more popular than almost any other big-name celebrity of the mid-1800s! He met Queen Victoria and Prince Albert Edward while he was in London. Queen Victoria was at first enraged, but then charmed, by the dwarf’s inability to walk backwards with ease (it was considered impolite to turn your back on the monarch) and she thought that everything about Stratton was adorable and comic, and invited him back to Buckingham Palace a number of times.
Back in America, Stratton’s fame only grew stronger when he met President Lincoln and Stratton notoriety made freak shows and sideshows widely socially-acceptable for the first time in history. People started treating circus freaks as entertainers and people, professionals who deserved respect, and not as oddities to be ogled at and degraded.
In 1863, Stratton married Lavinia Warren. Like everything else about his life, P.T. Barnum hammed this up for the press like it was going out of style. Stratton’s wedding photographs appeared in newspapers and magazines…and you could even gather a collectors’ set of them! His wedding was attended by thousands of people, and to greet all the guests who came to his house afterwards, Charles had to stand on top of a grand piano just to shake all their hands!
Stratton became obscenely rich from his freak-show appearances. He owned two houses, bailed out his cousin P.T. Barnum when the latter hit financial struggles, and even bought himself his own private yacht! Unfortunately, Stratton’s life was all too brief, and he died aged 45, in 1885, shortly after suffering a stroke.
NAME: Wilfred Westwood BIRTH-DEATH: 1897 – 1939. STAGE NAME: N/A CLAIM TO FAME: Circus Fat Boy
A staple of freak shows almost from day one was the classic ‘circus fat boy’ – typically an extremely obese, prepubescent child (usually a boy, although circus fat girls also existed – Wilfred’s older sister Ruby was a circus fat girl), whose job it was to shock and wow audiences with his gigantic size! Numerous sideshow fat boys existed throughout history, but one of the best documented was young Wilfred Westwood.
A native of New Zealand, Wilfred was the second-last child born into a large family, in 1897. Including his parents, there were nine people! Wilfred had an older sister (Ruby, also a circus fat-child), an older sister Eva, three older brothers, and one younger sister, Loyis Westwood. Together, Wilfred and Ruby brought the Westwood family incredible fame, and they toured Australia, New Zealand and several other countries besides. As early as 1900, when Wilfred was just three years old, newspaper articles were being written about him and his sister, as circus-promoters and journalists started trying to publicise the ‘giant children’.
Wilfred Westwood, aged 11, 1908.Weight: 308lbs.
By the age of 11, Wilfred weighed over 300lbs, and yet, despite this, he wasn’t even the largest circus fat-boy in the world…around the same time, John Trunley, the ‘Fat Boy of Peckham’, weighed over 350 pounds!
John Trunley (he’s the one on the right, in case you were wondering).
Trunley and Westwood were far from the only circus fat boys, but they were possibly, the most famous. In the 1800s and early 1900s, when infant and child mortality was as high as 25 or even 30%, and when millions of children were underfed and chronically malnourished (a public health-concern that caused the British government to start free school meals for underprivileged children) – children of incredible obesity were something to be celebrated and admired! At a time when the health-effects of extreme obesity were poorly understood, fatter children were seen as well-fed, healthy children, who were just a little bigger than the others.
Trunley became a watchmaker in later life, and died in 1944. Westwood became a glass-blower, and was killed in a car-crash in 1939.
NAME: Stephan Bibrowski BIRTH-DEATH: 1890 – 1932 STAGE NAME: Lionel the Lion Boy! CLAIM TO FAME: Hypertrichosis.
Born in Poland in 1890, young Stephan was abandoned by his mother almost since birth, when he started exhibiting symptoms of the phenomenally rare genetic condition known today as ‘Hypertrichosis’ or ‘Wolfman syndrome’, where the entire body – save the hands, and feet – are covered in hair!
Stephan’s mother believed that she had been a victim of ‘Maternal Impression’, also known as ‘Monstrous Birth Syndrome’, a popular (but unfounded) medical theory that had existed since at least the 1600s. Never heard of it? Not surprising.
The theory of maternal impression, or the ‘Monstrous Birth’ theory was the belief that if an expectant mother experienced some kind of trauma, her child would bear the marks of that trauma upon birth. In Bibrowski’s case, his father was attacked by a lion, which led his mother to believe that it was life-scarring event that led to her giving birth to a ‘lion’ of her own.
Lionel the Lion Boy!…Aged five, in 1895.
Young Stefan was taken in by the famous Barnum & Bailey Circus (yes, that Barnum), and by the age of 11 in 1901, he was touring Europe and America, billed as “Lionel the Lion Boy!” Apart from appearing as a sideshow, Lionel also performed acrobatic feats to impress the audiences who came to see him.
By the late 1920s, Lionel, or Bibrowski, started getting tired of the circus-life. He retired, and moved to Germany. He died in Berlin in 1932, at the age of 41. Cause of death: Heart attack.
NAME: Chang & Eng Bunker BIRTH-DEATH: 1811-1874 STAGE NAME: The Siamese Twins CLAIM TO FAME: Conjoined Twins
Ever heard the term ‘Siamese Twins’, referring to conjoined twins? Ever wondered where the term came from?
You have P.T. Barnum and Chang and Eng Bunker to thank for that!
Chang and Eng Bunker
Born in Siam (Thailand), Chang and Eng were of mixed American-and-Siamese heritage, and moved to America when they were still children. In later life, they adopted the more English-sounding surname ‘Bunker’ as part of their Americanisation. Chang and Eng started touring in 1829, and toured and exhibited themselves on and off for the rest of their lives, stopping in 1839. They had by this time become fluent in English, and took the time off to build a home for themselves, get married, and even raise children, but ten years later, they found themselves getting bored with ‘retirement’, and in 1849, they returned to the touring circuit through the 1850s and 60s.
The Bunkers were noted slaveholders in the years leading up to the Civil War, and in the period of Reconstruction that followed, much was made of this in the public press, which earned them great public backlash from the audiences who came to witness their performances. Depression and declining health led to the twins’ death within hours of each other, in 1874.
Apart from their fame in giving rise to the term ‘Siamese twins’, Chang and Eng Bunker hold another distinction – they were one of the longest-lived sets of conjoined twins in history – a record not surpassed until 2012!
NAME: Joseph Carey Merrick BIRTH-DEATH: 1862 – 1890 STAGE NAME: The Elephant Man CLAIM TO FAME: Proteus Syndrome (?)
By far the most famous freak show exhibitor in history (apart from Tom Thumb), has to have been Joseph Carey Merrick – better known as the Elephant Man.
Born in 1862, Merrick had a brutally hard and incredibly short life. His mother, one of the few people to care for him, died young, leaving him in the care of his father and stepmother. Repulsed by his appearance, they abandoned him, whereupon, Joseph was taken in by his uncle, a barber and hairdresser.
Joseph Merrick – the ‘Elephant Man’
Numerous attempts to find Joseph meaningful work (from hawking wares to rolling cigars, and even sweeping the floor of his uncle’s barbershop) all ended in failure due to his increasing deformities. Young Merrick ended up in the workhouse at least twice in his life, before finally deciding to turn his attention to the world of the circus freak!
Circus freaks were a world apart from everybody else in polite, straitlaced, and morally-upright Victorian society. They were a society of outcasts and misfits – the perfect place, Merrick reasoned, for someone like himself.
With the assistance of an understanding circus manager, Merrick started out on his career as a circus freak. In this role he remained for a few years, occupying a room behind a shop across the Whitechapel Road from the London Hospital. It was from this hospital that Frederick Treves, a noted surgeon, would come to meet Merrick. He studied his deformities and even had him photographed and examined. Merrick left London and traveled to Europe, where his fortunes took a downturn yet again.
Merrick had made a considerable amount of money from selling copies of his biography, which he sold alongside his freak-show act. The (slightly fictionalised) account of his life detailed his birth and upbringing, and the belief that he was the result of maternal impression. Mugged and robbed while in France, Merrick had lost almost all the money he’d made during his time as a circus-freak and returned to London almost penniless, arriving at Liverpool Street Station in 1886.
Joseph Merrick’s skeleton at the London Hospital
In an incident dramatically recreated in the 1980 film ‘The Elephant Man’, Merrick collapses from exhaustion, and only Dr. Treves’ business-card, in Merrick’s coat-pocket, gives a clue to his identity.
After a great deal of campaigning, fundraising, and philanthropic donations, enough funds were raised for the Elephant Man to live indefinitely in the London Hospital in Whitechapel. ‘The London’ was founded in the 1700s as a charity hospital, providing free healthcare to the impoverished and destitute. It survived entirely on public donations, and the physicians who worked there did so voluntarily, giving up a few days a week from their Harley Street addresses to tend to the sick and dying in the East End. In many respects, the London was the best place for Merrick. It was used to dealing with the very worst of the human condition – attempted suicides, alcoholism, industrial accidents, and infectious disease – which also meant that it was one of the most advanced medical centers in the world at the time. It was to the London Hospital that Jack the Ripper’s victims were taken, in 1888, for their autopsies.
Despite this background, the hospital had a strict policy of not admitting ‘incurables’ – those who had conditions which could not be treated, and which would only be a drain on the hospital’s already limited funds. It took a lot of convincing of the hospital’s board to allow Merrick special dispensation for his unique condition. It was more than obvious that he would not survive without round-the-clock medical care, and once enough funds had been raised, a two-room suite was laid out for him on the ground floor of the hospital. Here he would live for the rest of his life.
Merrick’s health improved, and it was during this time that Treves photographed Merrick once more, and interviewed him extensively about his life. Meeting the ‘Elephant Man’ became highly fashionable, and many of London’s wealthiest residents – including the future Queen Alexandra – would visit him at the hospital.
Joseph Carey Merrick – the Elephant Man – died in 1890. The autopsy on his disfigured body was carried out by the man who had come to know him better than anybody else – Sir Frederick Treves. Treves’ examination and the subsequent certificate he filled out, listed the cause of death as ‘Asphyxiation. It was Treves’ own theory that Merrick – who was unable to sleep lying down due to the contortions of his body, and the weight of his head – had slumped backwards against his bed during the night. This had caused his neck to break, cutting off his airway and resulting in death.
He was 27 years old.
To this day, Joseph Merrick’s skeleton is still held at the London Hospital.
The Public Perception of Freak Shows
The public tolerance of freak shows has waxed and waned over the years, decades, and even centuries and at various times they were celebrated, reviled, condemned and promoted.
The majority of freak-show managers and circus ringmasters looked upon running freak shows as being a social service. They were providing entertainment and education to the masses, as well as ‘shock-value’, indulging mankind’s fascination with the bizarre and unusual. At the same time, they were also providing misfits and people with horrible disfigurements or medical conditions, with a home, a family of sorts, a camaraderie, and a social network which gave them a living, a form of security, and a sense of belonging.
A lot of circus-freaks turned to their chosen occupation, usually as a last resort, to make the most of a bad situation, or simply to wow people with what they were. In an age before social security, government pensions, advocacy groups, effective medical treatment, and the countless other facilities and organisations available to people with severe disabilities today, being a circus-freak was, more or less – the last half-respectable occupation open to people who would otherwise have found themselves on the street.
Freak-shows have never really gone away. They still exist, and in some cases, have simply switched mediums. There’s no shortage, in the 21st century, of TV shows depicting all kinds of modern-day ‘freaks’ from ‘Freaky Eaters’ to ‘Hoarders’ and ‘Most Shocking’, which featured its own ‘circus fat boy’ – Dzhambulat Khatohov.
Cowboys, Indians, cattle-rustlin’, shootouts, sheriff’s posses, drinking, whoring and gambling! These are the sorts of things we think about when we imagine a time, and a place in American history known as the ‘Wild West’, also known as the ‘Old West’. But what was the Wild West? Where was it? How long did it last for? How wild did it really get? In this posting, we’re going to find out!
Before the ‘Wild West’
America in the first half of the 1800s was largely confined to the East Coast, bordering the Atlantic Ocean. From Florida in the south to northern states like New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, America was largely confined to the original “13 Colonies” that had been established by the British in the 1600s and 1700s. But with the end of the American Revolutionary War in the 1780s, America struck out to determine its own destiny. And part of that destiny was exploring the lands that existed beyond what was then called the “Proclamation Line” – an invisible barrier or border set up by the British to try and protect the land-rights of Native Americans back in colonial days.
The fastest way to explore this land without getting shot at was first – to buy it! This was achieved in the famous 1804 Louisiana Purchase, where France sold off its share of the North American continent (‘Louisiana’, named after King Louis) to the American republic, presided over by Thomas Jefferson at the time. From the western borders of the Louisiana Purchase, to the eastern limit of the original 13 Colonies, America had doubled in size! Explorers, hunters, trappers, cartographers and settlers seeking adventure and riches set out across this new land to find out what it contained.
The first government-sponsored expedition into this new land was the famous Lewis & Clark Expedition of 1804-1806 where Thomas Jefferson charged these two explorers with going west, both to map the area, find out what it contained, and also see if they could chart out a reliable route from the lands west of the Mississippi River, to the Pacific Coast of the continent. Jefferson also wanted these two explorers to get there first to stop foreign powers in the area (Britain and Spain, mostly) from trying to sneak in on their new turf!
It was with land-purchases and expeditions like these that America started gradually expanding westwards. By the 1830s and 40s, conflict with Mexico increased the United States’ grasp on the continent even further. The belief in “manifest destiny” was their justification to keep on going. This was the belief that their destiny was ‘manifest’ – or pre-determined and obvious, and that they should keep expanding if the means to do so were presented.
By the 1840s and 50s, America had established settlements on the West Coast, or else had taken over old Spanish and Mexican settlements. Cities like Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Francisco were established or expanded on during this period.
The California Gold-Rush
Oh my darlin’, Oh my darlin’, Oh my darlin’, Clementine,
Met a miner, 49’er, Excavatin’… For a mine…
Yep. When gold was discovered in California, the Great California Gold Rush was on! Ships lay idle in San Francisco Bay, and thousands of sailors, immigrants and locals fled to inland to the cry that “there’s gold in them there hills!”.
The earliest miners were popularly nicknamed ’49ers’ or ‘forty-niners’, named after the year that they arrived – 1849. And from then on, people came. Shiploads of people from all over the world rushed to California. And those who didn’t come by ship came by long, torturous wagon-trains that were pulled across the midwest and through the mountains by oxen on the so-called ‘prairie schooners’, better known as the covered wagon.
As gold was discovered and cities like Sacremento and San Francisco started to grow, people seeking opportunities surged westwards.
Or rather…they walked westwards.
See the problem was that getting from the Eastern states to the Western states was extremely difficult. Every single yard had to be trekked on foot or by using a wagon train. It could take weeks and months to get there, and walking all the time. If you didn’t want to walk, then you could take a ship!…which meant a voyage all the way down to the bottom of South America, and all the way up the West Coast! The problem with this was that you had to go past Cape Horn, the most dangerous stretch of ocean in the world! There was a very good chance that you’d never be seen again!
Um…nice knowing you…!
The Transcontinental Railroad
To make traversing the bigger, better USA a much safer and faster prospect, Abraham Lincoln authorised the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s. Thousands of miles of track were laid by hand through the Midwest. Tunnels were blasted out of mountainsides using nothing but gunpowder, and thousands of trees were used in constructing dozens of bridges and viaducts to get the trains through. To pay for the gigantic cost of the railroad, the government came up with the brilliant idea of selling off land that spread out from either side of the track. That way, farmers, ranchers and settlers could buy the land from the government, and the money raised would be used to pay for the railroad.
When the two halves of the Transcontinental Railroad were joined at Promontory Point, Utah, a single word was transmitted down the telegraph line in Morse Code: “DONE”, signalling the official completion of the line. It was the first live telecommunications news broadcast in the world.
With a reliable and fast mode of transport now in place, the Transcontinental Railroad allowed for the creation of towns dotted throughout the American west. With easy transport and convenient telegraph lines, anywhere that was worth settling (usually because of easy access to water, and some sort of raw resource worth making money from, like silver, gold or some other metal or mineral), was settled. Farmers and ranchers set themselves up in business, miners and prospectors got to work, and everything else that came to characterise the typical Wild West town went along with it!
The Birth of the Wild West
The period known as the ‘Wild West’ lasted from roughly the end of the Civil War in 1865, until the early 20th century, up to about the time of the First World War, in 1914. During this approximately fifty-year period, a whole mythology of the West was formed. How did it come to be? What was it? And how much of it was true?
The ‘Wild West’ was defined as the area of the United States stretching from the Pacific coast through the Midwest, up to the Mississippi river. This vast expanse of land, encompassing states such as California, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and so on. These states were sparsely populated and far from any major centers of civilisation, such as the great coastal cities of San Francisco, Boston, and New York.
These states (or territories, as most of them were back then) which made up the ‘Wild West’ were newly opened to settlement due to land grants, the railroads and the discovery of gold, silver and other minerals buried in the mountains and rivers that flowed through these territories, but had little in the way of infrastructure or reliable communications networks and what few hubs of civilisation there were, were generally few and far between.
Such settlements and towns as existed in the Wild West were often thrown up very quickly. Many started out as tent-cities. Eventually, these were replaced by cheap, easily-erected buildings, many of them sold as prefabricated, flat-pack kits! It was easy to order an entire…cottage, general store, tavern, sheriff’s office, barbershop, or even your very own flat-pack whorehouse, from a company ‘back East’! Companies manufactured these buildings and advertised them for sale in catalogs and magazines specifically aimed at people who were heading ‘out West’ to seek their fortunes in some gold-rush boom-town or one-horse cow-town stuck in the boondocks.
To make the transition from bustling Eastern metropolis to dusty western plains easier and safer, such prefabricated buildings were created. The entire structure of the building was simply packed up in crates, loaded on a train and driven out to where-ever your town happened to be. With the help of a few friendly locals, the town’s latest watering-hole, hotel, assay-office, general store or draper’s shop could be thrown up in a matter of days. Everything you needed came with the package – doors, windows, roofing…all you did was slot it together – IKEA for buildings!
Why did the Wild West Exist?
The Wild West sprang into existence for a number of reasons. Chief among these were unemployment, mining, ranching and farming, and industry.
At the end of the Civil War, there were loads of soldiers from both the Union and the Confederacy that were looking for jobs. When jobs couldn’t be found, they had to turn their sights to something else. Many became workers and labourers building the Transcontinental Railroad, and other networks that snaked their ways across the West. They laid the groundwork for what was to come. Other men gained employment setting up telegraph stations, sinking poles into the ground alongside railroad tracks, and stringing electric telegraph wires to link towns and cities.
Towns were established where-ever it was deemed profitable to do so. Many Old West towns were mining boom-towns, digging out gold, tin, copper, silver and other raw resources. Others made money from lumber, cattle-rearing, or else grew out of way-stations and outposts set up to give aid to hunters, trappers and cowboys who handled cattle, beavers, oxen and other game and stock-animals that could be herded or hunted out west.
Apart from cattle and herding, a lot of wild west towns were established because of mining. Gold and silver mines sunk or dug into the hills and mountains of the Wild West brought in thousands of people who had probably never mined in their lives, but who were willing to risk death and destruction to have a chance at striking it rich. General stores, hotels, drapers, ironmongers, blacksmiths, farriers and moonshiners all set themselves up to do business with these miners, and turn a tidy profit while they were at it.
Getting to the ‘Wild West’
For many people, just the whole act of ‘going west’ was an adventure in and of itself. To say it was challenging was an understatement. Before the 1860s, it required a covered wagon-train, months of supplies, water, everything that you might possibly need, a team of oxen to drive the wagons, and a competent guide. There was a very good chance that you would never make it to Nevada, California, New Mexico, or Arizona – deaths from dehydration, disease, food-poisoning, and Indian attacks were common and trails through the West created by pioneers which went before you were often lined with crosses marking the graves of fallen explorers and hopefuls.
The covered wagon or “Prairie Schooner’, a common sight on the roads westwards, until the Transcontinental Railroad took over in the 1860s and 70s.
The establishment of the Transcontinental Railroad by the start of the 1870s made travel west much easier. What once took months to traverse by covered wagon could now be done in a matter of a few days by faster, more reliable steam-trains – although that said, early railroads were notoriously dangerous. Derailments, boiler-explosions and head-on collisions with other engines were common. But assuming that you made it safely to the Wild West, what could you expect?
The classic wild west train of the 1860s and 70s. Early steam-trains were what the ‘old-timers’ liked to call ‘wood-burners’ – they burned wood in their fireboxes, not coal. The conical smokestack on top of the boiler was deliberately flared out as a spark-arrestor, to stop errant smouldering cinders from flying out the top and setting the grasslands on fire as the train moved along at high speed.
Typical Wild West towns were wild and rowdy places. Drinking, gambling, whoring and fighting were common occurrences. For the newly-arrived traveler, there were hotels or inns where you could stay, possibly a bank where you could deposit your gold or money, and if you were a miner or prospector, an assay-office where you could get any pay-dirt from your claim, processed and examined (‘assayed’).
The more ‘up-market’ Western towns had the latest technologies – their own railroad stations, water-pumps (usually windmill-driven screw-pumps that siphoned up groundwater), and maybe even one or two telegraph offices, usually near the town center, or the main railroad station.
Streets in Wild West towns were rarely, if ever paved – those covered wooden pavements and walkways weren’t just there to look good – they were to stop you from getting your boots or shoes slopped up with mud when it started to rain!
Regardless of size, every western town had the staples – a tavern or bar, an inn or hotel, a whorehouse, and a sheriff’s office. But were Wild West towns really as wild as we imagine?
Law and Order in the Wild West
The popular image of the Wild West is that it was a place where anything and everything goes. Do whatever, eat whatever, drink whatever, shoot whatever! And to hell with the consequences! I mean, that’s why it’s called the ‘Wild West’ to begin with, right?
Um…not so fast.
Don’t forget that a lot of Wild West towns sprung up because of the rich resources nearby. Cattle-ranching, farming and mining. No wild west town was going to last very long if they didn’t have at least some law and order to protect these vital industries which kept the towns viable and alive. If people expected labourers, farmers, miners and prospectors to make their home in their new fledgling community, then it had to be safe!
To protect the citizenry and the merchandise, materials or wealth that they brought to the town (or created while they were there), almost every western town of note had a sheriff, and if he was lucky, a few deputies (and if he was unlucky, then he’d have to raise a posse to do things for him). Either way, it was his job to enforce the laws, and one of the first laws on his list was one which might surprise you – gun-control!
Firearms in the Old West
When you think of the Wild West, you automatically think of guns! Revolvers like the Colt Single-Action Army, the Winchester lever-action repeating rifle, and the break-open dual-barreled coaching-guns, are the weapons which typically come to mind. By the 1860s and 70s, advances in firearms technology had done away with old muzzle-loading muskets and blunderbusses, to be replaced by sleek, smooth-actioned, fast-firing, fast-loading cartridge firearms which could be shot off and reloaded in a matter of a couple of minutes.
The Winchester Lever-action Rifle, various permutations of which, were popular in the Wild West from the 1860s up to the early 1900s. Pulling the lever discharged the spent shell and reloaded a fresh round from the tube-magazine underneath the barrel.
That said, the reality of firearms and the wild west isn’t nearly as rambunctious as you might imagine.
While the popular depiction of the West was that everybody in town was packin’ heat, with cowboys wavin’ six-shooters around and damsels hiding derringers up their garters, the truth is that in many Wild West towns – carrying firearms – or indeed, any kind of weapon at all – even a large knife – was actually illegal! The notion that there were crazy shootouts and gunfights every other day of the week, and that bodies stacked up faster than freshly-split firewood, simply isn’t true. In fact, the murder-rate in most Wild West towns would be disappointingly low for anybody looking to recreate a bloodthirsty Wild West boom-town.
Talking about revolvers – here’s a little trivia question for you:
In the Wild West, revolvers were popularly called ‘six-shooters’, because almost every revolver was capable of holding six rounds. But how many rounds did the average gunslinger actually load into his revolver? Find out at the end of the article…
The Colt Single-Action Army Revolver, popularly known as the ‘Peacemaker’, was one of the most common firearms found in the Old West. Firing large-calibre 44 and 45-cal. rounds, the gun was introduced in 1873…and has been in near-constant manufacture ever since!
So how tight was gun-control in the old west? Well, let’s take one of the most famous wild west towns as an example – Tombstone, Arizona. In 1881, Tombstone passed a law that stated in no uncertain terms, the following conditions regarding local gun-ownership:
“Section 1. It is hereby declared unlawful to carry in the hand or upon the person or otherwise any deadly weapon within the limits of said city of Tombstone, without first obtaining a permit in writing. Section 2: This prohibition does not extend to persons immediately leaving or entering the city, who, with good faith, and within reasonable time are proceeding to deposit, or take from the place of deposit such deadly weapon. Section 3: All fire-arms of every description, and bowie knives and dirks, are included within the prohibition of this ordinance.“
So if you were planning on strutting around town, pearl-grips flashing in the sun, you’d have to do some pretty fast talking to get yourself out of a very sticky situation if someone called up the sheriff on you!
Another trope of the Wild West was that death – or more specifically – death from gunfire – was a common occurrence back then. Sorry to say it, but it’s not actually true. Remember all those gun-laws I mentioned? They weren’t limited to just Tombstone – many famous Wild West towns had them, including Deadwood, That’s not to say that people didn’t die out West, but that it was rarely due to instances of unbridled showdowns with guns-a-blazin’! Deaths from gunfire in Wild West towns were surprisingly few, given how common they are in films! To take the example of Tombstone, again, during the Wild West period from the 1850s up to the 1910s or 20s, the kill-count never went above five dead bodies a year!
Tombstone was not an anomaly, either. Similar laws also existed in Dodge City, and in Wichita, Kansas. In fact, carrying an illegal or unregistered firearm in the Old West was one of the fastest ways to get you arrested, and town sheriffs enforced this law rigidly.
This…never happened.
Because of this, you might be thinking about another cliche of the Wild West: the classic wild west duel! You know – two men standing in the middle of Main Street, facing each other…whoever fires first and hits the target is the winner! Right?
Nope.
Historical evidence shows that the ‘classic’ wild west duel never happened. For one, in many towns it would’ve been illegal anyway, because, as I said, firearms were not allowed to be carried around. secondly, if you did sneak a gun into town without the proper permits, then chances were, people were going to raise a hell of a stink about it! In fact, it was due to the violation of the above 1881 gun-control law, that Tombstone, Arizona, saw what was possibly the first, last, only, and most famous gunfighter duel in Wild West history! You might possibly have heard of it – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
A corral, for those who’ve never heard of the term, is a yard or fenced in open space, typically used for housing cattle or horses. The Old Kindersley Corral (the actual name of the ‘O.K. Corral’ of legend) in Tombstone, was the location, in October of 1881, of the most famous western shootout in history!
Right?
Sorry…wrong again.
The gunfight certainly did happen, and it did take place in Tombstone…but that’s as far as truth will take us. In real life, the gunfight took place outside a photography studio…six doors down the street from the actual corral! It took place between four lawmen and five outlaws, three of whom were killed in the duel.
On one side was Doc Holliday, and the famous Earp Brothers – Sheriff, Wyatt Earp, and his two brothers Virgil and Morgan Earp, who had come along to back him up in his defence of law and order.
On the other side were Thomas and Frank McLaury, Bill and Ike Clanton, and Billy Claiborne.
In essence, the Clanton-McLaury gang were up to no good. The Earp Brothers and their associates had tried over and over again to shut them down. Both Virgil and Wyatt had some experience, either as soldiers or lawmen, and represented law-enforcement in Tombstone for as much as it was possible for them to do so.
Fed up with the Clantons and McLaurys flagrant disobedience of the law, the Earps, along with Holliday, decided that enough was enough and went to shut them down. They decided to take advantage of the newly-introduced gun-control laws that had been enacted just a few months earlier in the year – open-carry of unlicensed firearms was an arrestable offence in Tombstone, and the Earps were ready to take them in. Unfortunately, the cowboys were never going to go quietly. In the space of just thirty seconds, dozens of shots were fired, including two massive shotgun-blasts at point-blank range.
Both McLaury brothers, and Billy Clanton (aged just 19) were shot dead. Ike Clanton (unarmed at the time) fled the scene, and later tried to get the sheriff’s posse arrested on the charge of murder. The local Justice of the Peace ruled that the Earp Brothers and Doc Holliday were only enforcing town laws, and cleared them of any wrongdoing.
Bank-Robberies in the Wild West
One of the reasons why the Wild West existed in the first place was because of gold and silver. Miners dug the gold and silver out of the ground in ore. The ore was assayed (tested), then crushed and refined, melted down and cast into either ingots (bars) or coins. This could either be kept as cash, exchanged for banknotes, or simply stored in a bank, or sent ‘back East’. But if you kept your gold or cash in town, then you would’ve kept it at the local bank. And that bank was being robbed every other week, right?
Um. No.
Believe it or not, but bank robberies were surprisingly rare in the Old West. Partially this was because of the aforementioned gun-laws, and also because banks and other similar institutions were well-guarded in those days. OK, fair point. But what about when the gold bullion or the dust or coins were being transported? What about train-robberies, didn’t they happen?
Robbers attacking shipments on the move certainly did happen, and they were a recognised risk. To deal with it, companies contracted to store and ship gold and other valuables took measures against them. One example is the Wells-Fargo Company. Recognised throughout the west thanks to its green postboxes, Wells-Fargo was a delivery company, shipping and transporting everything from Aunt Susie’s letter about her new cat, to the glittering results from Mr Donnovan’s latest claim! Because Wells-Fargo’s stagecoaches carried such valuables, they were a prize target for robbers and holdup-men. But holding up a stagecoach was no walk in the park.
A Wells Fargo stagecoach. The coach-guard with his double-barreled shotgun sat up the front (on the right) in the driver’s box, next to the coachman, giving ride to the term ‘riding shotgun’.
To protect their stagecoaches, their cargoes, and the passengers riding inside them, Wells-Fargo employed coach-guards – heavily-armed men who rode along the outside of the coach in order to keep the driver and passengers safe. Usually there was anywhere from one to three guards. Regardless of the number of them, one guard always sat up front, next to the driver. Across his lap would be a double-barreled shotgun, which he would happily deploy to deal with any would-be outlaws.
A break-open, double-barreled sawn-off shotgun, popularly called a ‘coach-gun’ for use on stagecoaches. The shorter barrel length made the gun easier to move around in a tight situation and lighter, although the lack of weight in the barrel meant that the recoil would be more powerful. While it only fired two shots at a time, the coach-gun’s widespread buckshot ammunition was unlikely to miss its target – useful when you’re on a rocking stagecoach going at speed.
Ever wondered why riding in the front seat next to the driver is called “riding shotgun”? This is where it comes from – the double-barreled shotguns carried by coach-guards in the Wild West!
Train Robberies in the Wild West!
OK, so we’ve looked at bank-robberies, but what about train-robberies? How common were they? Like bank-robberies, they did happen, but also like bank-robberies, not as frequently as you might think. Among the great train-robbers were Jesse James and his cohorts, and another famous Western outlaw – Butch Cassidy!
Trains made enticing targets for robbery because they were the fastest way to transport valuable goods. Trains were often loaded with gold, silver, coinage, banknotes, payroll-safes, and wealthy passengers. Although they were the fastest vehicles in the world at the time, they still did not go THAT fast – until the early 20th century, it was rare for a steam train to clock up over about 60 miles an hour.
That said, the typical Hollywood method of sticking up a train, by riding alongside it on horseback and jumping onto it, almost never happened. It was far easier to just get on the train at the station, and then hijack the damn thing once it was out of sight of civilisation, or else to quite literally hold up the train by creating some sort of roadblock across the tracks, forcing it to stop, or risk derailment.
To combat the risks of being robbed, train-staff often carried their own protection. Conductors and train-guards who rode along with trains carrying valuable cargo often packed some sort of firearm, either a shotgun or revolver, to discharge against would-be attackers. In one instance, a conductor and a guard even managed to call for help! Hopping out the back of their train, the two men used the latest technology to summon the police – an Ericsson field telephone!
The telephone came complete with long poles and cables. All you did was connect the cables to the poles. Then you hoisted them up into the air and hooked them onto the nearest telegraph line (which was usually alongside the railroad line). Then it was just a matter of cranking up the phone and putting a call through! Using this method, the conductor was able to contact the nearest sheriff’s office and have the train-robbers apprehended!
Cowboys and the Old West
Ah, the cowboy! Rough, tough and tumble. An iconic of hot-blooded All-American sex-appeal! Yeah?
Eh…maybe. Depends on what your sexual preferences are!
The truth is that most cowboys in the Old West, or at least a good proportion of them, were not the well-muscled, good-looking young hunks that you find plastered on the bedroom walls of teenage girls or frustrated housewives – in reality, a lot of cowboys weren’t even white!
See, being a cowboy was a hard, dirty, dangerous job with low pay. Herding hundreds or thousands of cattle long distances was a thankless, thirsty and exhausting job, and because of this, it was one that typically went to people who probably had no other choice but to drive cattle – typically Mexican immigrants, free blacks, or freed or former slaves. By some estimates, up to 25% of cowboys in the Wild West were black. Sure, white cowboys did exist, but they weren’t the only ones that you could find. On top of that, gay cowboys were far more common than you might think!
That’s right, you heard me. Gay cowboys.
Historical records show that homosexuality was pretty common ‘out on the range’. Cut off from civilisation…especially female civilisation…for weeks and months at a time, many cowboys tended to get a bit bored, and before long, even other guys started lookin’ pretty good.
But what about the attitudes to homosexuality back in the 1800s, surely that put a stop to this stuff, right?
Well…not as fast as you might think, if at all! Given that the job was so hard already (no pun intended, I swear to God!), ranchers and farmers were desperate to find good, solid men to drive their cattle long distances. The work was so demanding and difficult that they weren’t about to turn away someone just because he was more interested in what hung below than what rested on top – good help was just so hard to find that ranchers just couldn’t be so picky. And at any rate, sexual preferences, or even sexual encounters, only ever happened way out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Given that – who was ever going to know? After all, knowing how, when and why to keep stuff under your hat was an important skill to learn in those days, if you expected to live a long life.
Speaking of hats – most cowboys did not wear the classic broad-brimmed Stetson center-pinch cowboy hat, either! Oh no. Although it might look very impressive and produce an alluring silhouette, the truth is that most cowboys actually wore the much more common standard, black bowler hat.
The bowler hat was extremely common in the second half of the 1800s and was worn by everybody from street-toughs to Wall Street bankers, shopkeepers and cowboys….especially cowboys!
Why? Well, one reason why the bowler hat was so popular was because its hard felt, dome-top design meant that it was pretty decent when it came to protecting the wearer from being whacked on the head. Unlike other hats such as top-hats, or the stereotypical cowboy hat, the bowler had to be rigid in order to maintain its characteristic curved shape. Because of this, it quickly became popular as a sort of ‘everyday hard-hat’, a useful feature when being thrown from your horse at full gallop was a real possibility!
Outlaws and Robbers!
The word ‘outlaw’ comes from England, and was originally an English translation of the original Latin phrase from the Middle Ages, which was “Caput Lupinum“.
‘Caput Lupinum’ translates literally as ‘wolf’s head’. Wolves, a menace in medieval England, were notorious for killing sheep and other farm-animals back in the day. Since England’s economy rode on the sheep’s back, anybody who could kill a feral wolf would not face any penalties (as opposed to say, killing deer or sheep or cattle unlawfully).
This same concept was applied to wanted criminals. Criminals who had evaded justice could be very hard to capture in the days before CCTV, squad-cars and two-ray radio. To capture these nefarious criminals, the easiest thing to do was to declare them ‘outlaws’. This meant that the wanted person was now ‘outside the law’.
This meant that they no longer had an obligation to follow the law. It also meant that the law had no obligation to protect them! Anyone who came across an outlaw could – perfectly legally – kill him, using whatever means necessary – and – just like killing a wolf – would face no punishment. Without regular police-forces to maintain order, it was up to ordinary people to observe the ‘Hue and Cry’ and maintain their own order.
Along with the outlaw was his counterpart – the sheriff! The word ‘sheriff’ is a corruption of the original words ‘Shire Reeve’ – an elected official whose job it was to maintain law and order on a lord or baron’s lands and keep the peace. The ‘shire’ was the area of land which the ‘reeve’ oversaw. Eventually, the two words melded into one – Sheriff.
Wild West Outlaws
The Wild West is famous for its outlaws. Jesse James and his gang, John Wesley Hardin, Butch Cassidy, and Billy the Kid were all real people, and they all committed real crimes and real murders! But not everything about these larger-than-life characters is what they seem. Much of what they did, or didn’t do, has been shrouded in tall tales, half-truths and retellings that stretch back over a hundred years. Billy the Kid’s first name wasn’t even Billy! He got the name ‘Billy the Kid’ from the name William H. Bonney…which wasn’t even his real name…in fact, it was Henry McCarty.
Although Billy the Kid was often portrayed as a dangerous and reckless outlaw who killed nearly two dozen people, the truth is that by the time he was shot and killed…at the age of just 21…he’d only murdered four men. And if you believe the stories, he probably shot them with his revolver, which he held in his left hand! Well…that’s not true, either!
The belief that Billy the Kid was lefthanded came from this:
Henry McCarty, AKA Billy the Kid.
Taken in 1880, the year before he died, this is the only confirmed photograph of Billy the Kid known to exist. It’s an old tintype snapshot. In the photograph, he’s carrying two weapons – a revolver on his left hip, and a Winchester lever-action rifle in his right hand. Since the revolver was on the left side of his body, it was always assumed that Billy the Kid was lefthanded. Right?
Wrong.
The photograph is a tintype. This primitive method of photography, while effective, was deceiving. A tintype camera does not produce an exact copy of what it sees – it produces a mirror image of what it sees. That means that any photograph produced from a tintype camera has been flipped the other way around. The error was only discovered when historians examined the weapons in the photograph. The distinctive outline of the Winchester rifle made researchers realise that they’d made a vital error!
See…the Winchester has a tube-magazine underneath the barrel. To load this magazine, you feed rifle-cartridges into the gun from the breech through a spring-loaded hatch above the trigger, known as a loading-gate. If you look at the photograph of the Winchester rifle further up the page, you’ll notice that the gate is (and always has been) on the RIGHT side of the gun.
But in the photograph above of Billy the Kid…the gate is on the LEFT side of the gun – which is an impossibility because Winchester never made guns like that. When the error was finally realised and the photograph was flipped around, it was revealed that Billy the Kid was actually righthanded and that his revolver was actually on his right hip, and the rifle was on his left!
These are just a few examples of how even the outlaws of the Wild West were mythologised, and made out to be bigger, badder and meaner than they really were.
The End of the Wild West
From the early and mid 1800s, the Wild West grew and expanded. It reached its peak in the 1870s, 80s and 90s, up to the turn of the 20th century. As modern technology entered the towns, and the industries that once gave wild west towns their livelihoods, such as mining and cattle-herding, started to die away, the Wild West was consigned to history. Even as early as the turn of the century, it was becoming mythologised as a time gone by, with larger-than-life characters like Buffalo Bill Cody putting on his ‘Wild West Shows’ and touring the world with his famous act. By the end of the First World War, the Wild West had already become the stuff of myths and legends. Those who had lived their lives in the Old West moved on with their new lives. Some of them, like lawman Pat Garret, who killed Billy the Kid, wrote down their memoirs and life-stories in the 1920s and 30s. These twilight reminiscences are what give us the truth, and some of the myths, of what the Wild West was really like.
Finding out More?
If you want to know more, I can strongly recommend the documentary series “Wild West Tech”, if you can find it. Entertaining and educational all in one!
— — — —
So, did you figure out how many rounds were loaded into a revolver?
The answer is FIVE.
Although revolvers could hold six rounds, most cowboys and outlaws who carried revolvers usually only loaded five rounds into their guns (especially if they were older-style cap-and-ball blackpowder revolvers). The reason for this practice was so that the firing pin at the end of the cocking hammer always rested on an empty chamber.
When you were bouncing around in the saddle of your horse, there was a very big risk that the jolting and vibrations could cause the gun to go off accidentally! To ensure that you didn’t shoot yourself…or your horse…due to a sudden jerk that set the firing mechanism off…one chamber was always left empty, as a safeguard against accidents.
With the news that there’s going to be a Downton Abbey MOVIE in the works, with most of the original cast teaming up all over again to make a big splash on the big screen (and just in time too. I mean, Maggie Smith ain’t gettin’ any younger, here…), I’m sure that a lot of period drama buffs will be dusting off their DVD collections or hard-drives which contain the episodes of ‘Downton Abbey’, and will sitting back to enjoy all that high-class British drama once again, to bone up on everything that’d happened in the series from the pilot episode in April 15th, 1912.
Downton Abbey has singlehandedly been attributed to a rise in interest in things like classic formal attire, household servants, early 20th century history – and that most high-class of all high-class things: owning a grand country estate and a huge manor house which is centuries old! Indeed, the whole thing of ‘grand country house living’ has always been something that people have been fascinated about for decades, probably because it’s where all the major action happens in all those old love-stories, drama series, and of course, who could forget the classic ‘country house mystery’ genre (“It was Colonel Mustard in the billiard room with the candlestick!”).
In this posting, I’ll be looking at the country house way of life. Where it came from, what it was like, how it survived, and finally – what happened to make that way of life disappear almost entirely from the face of the earth in the space of a few short years. So, let’s begin…
Ham House, near London, dates back to the 1610, and is among the earliest examples of what we would call a ‘grand country house’ today.
All around the world, throughout history, one of the biggest status symbols that there has ever been, is the grand country house estate. They existed in Canada, America, all throughout Europe, in Asia, and even as far away as Australia.
But when most people think of grand country house estates, they almost invariably imagine the great estates and grand houses built in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. When people picture the pinnacle of high-fashion, high-class, ultra-rich living, a grand country estate is almost always one of the prerequisites to such a lifestyle and way of life.
That said, most people – even most rich people – don’t live this way anymore. Why not? How and where did this style of living come from, how did it sustain itself, how did it survive, and finally – how did it finally collapse, to become a forgotten, romanticised remnant of history, something to be elegantly recreated in TV dramas and movies such as Upstairs Downstairs, Downton Abbey, The Secret Garden, Gosford Park and the stories of Jane Austen?
Before Grand Houses – Castles and Manors
The first grand houses were not really houses as we know them today. They were castles! Castles as we imagine them today originated in France in the early Middle Ages. Originally made of wood and earthworks, large, elaborate castles, built of stone and with impressive defenses like earthworks, moats, ditches, drawbridges, gatehouses, corbels, jetties, battlements and crenelations started being built in the 1000s, 1100s and 1200s. One such example is the Tower of London.
Castles were not just houses, though. They served multiple purposes. They could be houses, sure. But they were also usually centers of government, storehouses, military barracks, vaults, prisons and much more besides. Nevertheless, they were the original ‘grand country houses’.
By the 1500s and 1600s, with the rise of cannons, muskets and pistols, and the decline of traditional European feudalism, the castles of old started changing, too. They became less imposing and more like military fortresses and strongholds, rather than large, multipurpose structures. Now, castles existed purely for defense, and any thoughts to turning the structure into a home were generally considered secondary (think of Walmer Castle, once home to the Duke of Wellington himself!).
It was at this point that the ‘castle’ started splitting apart into three distinct entities: The palace, the fortress, and the manor house.
The Fortress
All castles are fortresses. Not all fortresses are castles. That’s what a fortress is in a nutshell – a fortified or strengthened structure designed as a military barracks and stronghold – from the Latin word ‘Fortis’ – meaning ‘strength’.
That said, some fortresses were still called ‘castles’, likely out of habit. Castles built in the 1500s by rulers such as Henry VIII were still called ‘castles’ even though they bore very little resemblance in design or appearance to castles of the Middle Ages. 16th century ‘castles’ were lower, more angular and were designed to house musketeers and heavy artillery, not archers, crossbowmen, knights and men-at-arms.
The Palace
As society stabilised, the need to house the country’s ruler in a fortified castle or stronghold lessened. This gave rise to another structure – still grand and imposing, but designed more as a statement of wealth, power and opulence, rather than as one of protection and military might – the palace! Structures like Hampton Court Palace, Whitehall Palace, the Palace of Westminster, the Palace of Versailles, the Winter Palace and Summer Palace, and the Palace of the Forbidden City reflect this. They’re grand and protected, but are built more as showpieces rather than as military strongholds.
The Manor House
Last but not least comes the manor house.
As the need for castles disappeared, the first ‘great houses’ built by the nobility or the military aristocracy started to appear. These were called ‘manor houses’. They were built more as homes rather than as military fortresses or castles, and were designed chiefly – like with palaces – for comfort and good living. Yes, some still had a nod to their militaristic pasts, such as moats, battlements, bridged entryways and gatehouses – but these were now seen more as anachronistic design-features, meant to make the building look more impressive and flashy, rather than actually serving any real defensive functions. The battlements built on the tops of 16th and 17th century manor-houses were small and thin – not designed as shield for defending soldiers, as battlements on castles centuries before, had been.
The Rise of the Manor House
As fears of endemic warfare died away in the 17th and early 18th centuries, the aristocracy started producing grander and grander country houses. With no wars to blow money on, the wealthy started blowing money on flashy homes instead. Homes with features like huge, double-hung sash windows with lots of glass, features like huge doors, high ceilings, a fireplace in every room, elaborate kitchens to produce gargantuan feasts, ballrooms, living rooms, music rooms, lounges, bedroom suites and enfilades.
Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. Built in the 1590s, it represents a new type of grand house that was being built at the time, very different from the castles of the Middle Ages. Meant for comfort and good living, rather than defense and security, it earned the nickname ‘Hardwick Hall, more Glass than Wall’, due to its gigantic windows.
An enfilade, by the way, is a long series of rooms one after the other that stretches from one end of the house to the other. In later times, these would slowly be closed off, and the leftover corridor became known as a Long Gallery, or just a ‘gallery’. With so much wall-space, people would hang their pictures, sketches, portraits and paintings there. This is why we view art in a ‘gallery’ to this day.
The North Enfilade at Blenheim Palace.
Along with the gallery and everything else came the inclusion of a chamber for private parties where people could withdraw and be alone with each other. Today, we call them ‘drawing rooms’.
It was during this time that bedrooms and bedroom suites started becoming a thing. Instead of sharing rooms (or even sharing BEDS, which was very common in those days!), you now had your own bedrooms! And if you were really wealthy, then your room would also have a ‘closet’.
The ‘closet’ was a small chamber next to your bedroom. It served a function similar to a study or sitting-room, and a private space to do personal things like pray, write, read or relax. Since only one’s most intimate and personal activities and deepest emotions and feelings were expressed within a closet, it became associated with secrecy and personal thoughts and feelings. That’s why we call someone who has revealed their sexuality – something extremely personal – to the world – ‘coming out of the closet’.
Inside a Manor House
Along with bedrooms, a gallery, dining room, kitchen and large reception rooms, early manor houses had a few rooms which we don’t have today, or whose functions have changed significantly.
One such room is the pantry. Yes, in times past, a pantry was an actual room, not just a cupboard full of instant noodles, coffee and tea. The pantry was the room where all things associated with baking bread were stored, including mixing-bowls, kneading-boards, dough-troughs, forms, molds and other baking implements, along with baked goods themselves, which were stored there to keep them cool and dry and away from moisture which would cause mold.
On top of that came a room which has disappeared entirely – the still room.
The still room was the chamber where you distilled (hence the name) essentials oils, drinks, alcoholic beverages and medicines. At a time when country houses had to be much more self-sufficient than they are today, a chamber for making your own drinks, medicines and alcoholic beverages was important. As it became more and more possible to buy these things rather than make them, by the start of the Victorian era, still rooms had disappeared, incorporated into kitchens in older houses, and being left out completely in newer ones.
Another room which used to exist in old houses was something called a ‘buttery’.
No, the buttery was not where you stored butter and cream and jam (delicious as they are…) – no. A buttery was where you stored…butts!
Okay, stop giggling.
Butts are kegs…barrels…casks!
Casks of beer, casks of wine, kegs of rum and so on. Basically, it’s where you put drinks. Now obviously drinks have to be kept cool, so the buttery was almost always a basement room, usually under the kitchen. The person who was in charge of looking after the buttery was the…butler, and originally, the man’s job was to maintain and serve the household stocks of beverages. In time, the butler took on more and more responsibilities until by the 1700s and 1800s, he had become the chief of ‘below-stairs’ life, organising and rostering all the other servants.
The Heyday of the Country House (1500s – 1700s)
The country house as we know it, or even as we imagine it, started being a thing as early as the 1500s. From then to now, it went through many changes and morphed in and out of different forms. First they were fortified manors, then graceful mansions, then sprawling estates!
Where, you might ask, did they get the money to build these houses?
Make no mistake, a country house was expensive to build, and even more expensive to maintain (but more about that, later).
Highclere Castle, the setting for the hit period TV series, ‘Downton Abbey’. Highclere has featured in many TV shows over the years, including numerous episodes of the 1990s ‘Jeeves & Wooster’ series, and at least one episode of ‘Miss Marple’.
Many of the people who owned country houses also owned vast, vast, VAST tracts of land, usually passed down father-to-son, father-to-son for countless generations dating all the way back to the Middle Ages. Charging rent on this land for farmers who wished to use it to grow crops, raise livestock, or otherwise make a living there, was the chief form of income for landed aristocracy.
The same applied for anything else – any watermills, flour-mills, brick or tile kilns, any ovens or bakeries, and any villages and taverns or inns built on the extensive lands owned by the local landlord all had to pay rent or taxes to the lord of the manor. So long as he was smart, the lord of the manor could live off this income more than just a little comfortably, without ever having to lift a finger…except to coin his money, perhaps. This is where the whole thing about the ‘idle rich’ and the idea that aristocracy didn’t have to work for their money, came in. This is touched on in “Downton Abbey” where Miss O’Brian says that “gentlemen don’t work, not real gentlemen!“.
This system lasted for years, decades, centuries! Passed down father to son over and over again. In this way, landed families could amass GIGANTIC fortunes, and since most of this money wasn’t taxed – they could do whatever they liked with it – and most of them blew their fortunes on building bigger, grander, more opulent houses, amassing huge collections of silverware, antiques, furniture, paintings and foreign curiosities. If the lord of the manor had a day-job (like being a government minister, army officer, or a naval captain of skill and fame), then they could swell their coffers even MORE by earning a salary, or winning prize-money during battles.
Laws favourable to the aristocracy keep them in power, and in money and for centuries, they held a near monopoly on much of the land, enabling them to milk it for all it was worth.
Keeping it in the Family
One reason why the aristocracy held onto their homes for so long and were able to maintain these lavish lifestyles for generations was because of the peculiarities of English law, which stipulated that (unless stated otherwise), country house estates and their contents always passed from the master of the house to his eldest son and heir (or the second-eldest, if the first had died and left no heirs of his own).
This was all maintained due to one of the key plot-elements that ran through the core of award-winning TV series “Downton Abbey“. As Maggie Smith put it, “The entail must be smashed!“.
OK. Point taken.
What the hell is an entail?
In its simplest terms, an entail was a legal device which regulated the laws of inheritance in Britain. An entail was a form of trust (whereby one party – say a parent – sets something aside – say, the house and estate – in the hands of a second party – say, a lawyer – to give to a third party at a particular time – say, the heir to the estate, when that parent dies).
Basically, the entail stipulated that houses HAD to be passed down, father to son, father to son, generation after generation. Or if not father to son, then at least homeowner to his closest living male descendant (be he a cousin, a nephew, or a brother, and so-on).
Passing land and property down like this through the generations is how you end up with these massive country houses filled with all kinds of expensive treasures – because the properties were never ALLOWED to be sold or gifted to anyone outside the family – it was basically illegal to do so. In Downton Abbey, as Lady Mary isn’t a man, she can’t inherit the house and estate or the money that goes with it, which leads to all sorts of complications, which drives the series along.
The Country House Enters the Modern Era (1700-1900)
The 1700s and early 1800s was the era of the great expansion of country houses. This is when aristocracy built grand houses and expanded on even grander ones. Money was flowing in from trade and commerce and rent and taxes, and they were all living the good life. But something happened in the 1700s that started to force a change.
The Industrial Revolution.
Prior to the 1700s, most people lived in small towns or villages, or out in the country. Most people were farmers or artisans or tradesmen. The pace of life had barely changed in centuries because there was nothing to change it, and nothing around to make it worth bothering to change. But when the first steam-engines, canals, and later, train-lines started being developed, life would never be the same again. Suddenly, it was possible to work faster, produce more, earn more, do more with what you had! And this had a huge impact on the country house way of living.
A great example of a grand country manor built without any regard for expenses is Manderston House in Scotland. Constructed at the start of the 20th century, when architect John Kinross asked the owner (Sir James P. Miller, 2nd Bt. Manderston) what the construction-budget would be, he was simply told that “It doesn’t matter”, and to just get on with building it.
With the rise of factories and warehouses, better wages and a more reliable income than could be had from farming or rearing livestock, peasantry, tenant farmers and villagers in the countryside fled from their jobs that they’d had for centuries, and moved to cities like London, New York, Paris, and Berlin, to work in better jobs with better pay and better conditions and more job-security.
Suddenly, there weren’t so many people working the land anymore.
Fewer people working the land meant fewer people that the local landlord could tax.
This meant that for the first time in centuries, the cornerstone of aristocratic wealth – control of the land, and taxing the people who lived on it – was starting to crumble. At the same time, a new landed gentry started to rise up to challenge the old aristocracy. They had no titles, no fancy lineages going back to the Middle Ages, no flashy family names or noble birth – but the one thing they did have was MONEY.
And LOTS OF IT. These were the industrialists. Factory-owners, mill-owners, railway entrepreneurs, shipping magnates, import-export moguls, bankers, manufacturers and wheeler-dealers. And they wanted a taste of what previously had been the preserve of the aristocracy – a big flashy house out in the country, away from the smog and dust and soot of the big cities. And so, they started building.
And building.
AND BUILDING.
The 1700s and 1800s saw dozens of country houses being raised from the ground upwards in Canada, America, Europe, Britain and Australia. If the way to show you’d arrived at the top echelons of society was to have a flashy house surrounded by fields, then the nouveau riche of the industrial age were going to make damn sure that they would have the biggest and flashiest houses possible, and some even started competing against each other to see who could have the biggest, grandest, most outlandish homesteads, much like how the ultra-rich now compete for yachts, jets and cars – 300 years ago, they competed with gardens, dining halls, gilded entryways and grand ballrooms for those swanky, all-night parties.
The Rise of Industry
As industry started to rise and rise, and the new industrialised landed gentry started buying up land and building grand houses on them, the old aristocracy started to crumble. By the 1830s and 40s, steamships had become a thing. Now, it was possible to buy a ticket, get on a train and head to the docks, get on a ship and sail safely across the Atlantic to the New World – all in a couple of weeks – whereas it would’ve taken MONTHS to do this by horse and cart, and in a sailing ship! Since people could now move, and could now seek newer and better opportunities, they were no longer tied to the land. As travel and trade rose, the grip of the old country house owners started to crumble.
One huge blow was dealt in the 1800s in the massive farming slump that happened across Britain and Europe. America, with its huge tracts of land, railway systems and steamships, could grow, harvest, and import grain, flour, wheat, barley and other foodstuffs to Europe much faster and more efficiently than the Europeans could produce them on their own. As a result, farming in Europe (and especially in Britain) started to crumble – and in England, the bottom basically fell out of the agricultural market. Wheat prices in Britain disintegrated and farmers fled their farms, or else moved to livestock instead of crops.
And what did the aristocracy rely on for their money? Rent from farmers. If there weren’t any farmers, there wasn’t any rent. If there was no rent to collect, there was no money coming in! And this had a massive impact on country house living.
Maintaining a Country House Estate
Country houses are huge structures. Dozens of bedrooms, loads of reception rooms, servants quarters, laundries, kitchens, cellars, basements, guestrooms, stables, carriage-houses…remember that they used to have to be self-sufficient, so they had to have everything they needed to support themselves. This meant that they were HUGE. And in the 1700s when the money was flowing – noblemen and noblewomen built bigger and bigger houses, expanding and expanding, renovating and rebuilding over and over again.
This is fine – great, even – when you have a steady income coming in from the land that you can charge rent on, but what happens when that disappears?
The problem was that these country houses were massive money-pits. It took thousands of pounds to run them every single year. Cleaning, heating, water, food, drinks…and that doesn’t include maintenance – water-pipes, flooring, roofing, sweeping the chimneys, repairing the windows, fixing the gutters, repairing the masonry and upkeeping the gardens.
And we haven’t even begun to look at the wages for the indoor servants, which in some houses could number up in the dozens of people! This was made even MORE complicated by the fact that, from the 1700s to the 1850s, Britain actually had a servant tax.
Yes, that’s right. A SERVANT TAX.
To be specific – a tax on male servants.
See, men are really useful – they can serve as stable-boys, footmen, coachmen, gardeners, butlers, valets, hallboys…but the problem is – they can also serve as soldiers, sailors and military officers. In time of war, (such as during the American Revolution in the 1770s, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Conquests of the 1790s and 1810s, and the European conflicts such as the Crimean War in the 1850s), the country needed soldiers and sailors. And if they were busy serving you, instead of fighting for king and country, then you, as the householder, were expected to recompense the government for their loss in manpower – by paying a tax on every single male servant that you had in your employ!
Add that to the costs of heating, lighting, water, food, drink, wages, maintenance…see how expensive this is?
And that’s provided that you’re not also trying to keep up with the Joneses by trying to live like a billionaire every day of your life! By the second half of the 1800s, British aristocrats were struggling to maintain their lifestyles. Rising costs, falling income and the fact that their houses were gigantic caused a lot of them to just give up!
Many were now cursing their ancestors for blowing millions of pounds on big flashy extensions and expansions, which were now far too expensive to maintain properly. Some aristocrats maintained more than one house – most of them maintained at least two! A country house (the big flashy one) and the townhouse – a smaller, more modest, usually terraced Georgian or Victorian house, often situated in London, which was the family’s base of operations during the London social season in the summer months. As country houses grew more and more expensive to look after, most families abandoned them and just upped sticks and moved into their townhouses fulltime instead.
The Dollar Princesses
The European and British industrialist classes didn’t have to worry about money. They’d built their fortunes from the ground up and had lots of money flowing in from factories and mills, shipping lines, railroad companies and mercantile ventures. As such, they could afford to fuel their luxurious country house lifestyles much more easily than the old aristocracy. Too proud, or unable to work for a living, the aristocracy struggled on, running their houses on dwindling inheritances, and shrinking income from their estates due to the sharp decline in farming. But just as it all seemed lost, salvation was at hand, from, as Churchill would later put it, “in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old“.
For the British aristocracy, liberation from their growing financial nightmares came in the form of the ‘dollar princesses’.
The term ‘dollar princess’ comes from the late Victorian era. It referred to young American or Canadian heiresses of marriageable age who came from the social elite and the upper professional classes of North American society. The daughters of families like the Vanderbilts, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers and the Morgans – the big, old-money robber-baron clans who had amassed gigantic fortunes in the 1830s to the early 1900s.
In most cases, rich American fathers wanted their daughters to marry into respectable, high-society families. Naturally, you don’t get much more high-society than British nobility, and so wealthy American fathers and mothers started looking across the Atlantic for potential marriage-partners for their little baby girls. At the same time in England, impoverished English noble heirs (remember that houses and estates ALWAYS passed down the MALE line of inheritance) were looking for potential wives who would be loaded with cash in order to dig them out of their present financial disasters.
To kill two birds with one stone, the logical thing to do was for American heiresses to marry English heirs. And they did. In their droves! The heir to the Vanderbilt fortune married the Duke of Marlborough and a Brooklynite named Jennie Jerome married a certain Lord Randolph Churchill.
Yes. THAT Churchill.
If not for the dollar princesses, Winston Churchill would have never been born.
Working in a Country House
One of the reasons why English country houses were so expensive to run was simply down to the sheer amount of manpower required merely to keep it operating on a daily basis. Country houses were enormous structures and without modern technology, it took a small army of servants, inside and outside, just to keep them functioning smoothly, never mind what happened during big events like holidays, family birthdays, wedding anniversaries and Christmas!
The servants on Downton Abbey.
A typical household could have up to a dozen or more staff including the butler, housekeeper, chef or cook, at least one kitchen-maid, at least two or three housemaids, at least two or more footmen, scullions or scullery maids and hall-boys who did double- or even triple-duty as boot-boys and pantry-boys (basically hall-boys did all the heavy manual labour below stairs). On top of that you have valets, ladies maids, and if there are young children – governesses or nannies all on top of that.
“You rang, m’lady?” – Many 18th, 19th, and early 20th century grand manor houses (and even many townhouses built in the same era) were equipped with extensive service-bell systems, comprised of wires or cables, pulleys, levers, pivots and springs, which attached a bell at one end in the servants’ hall to a specific room in the house. The wires and pulleys ran up the walls and along the ceilings (usually behind the walls and ceilings) and in and out of rooms, up and down stairs. Usually the bells were all grouped together on a ‘bell-board’ where each bell was tagged to the room it served. It’s the earliest form of ‘intercom’ found in households. In the early 1900s, some of the old cable-and-pulley networks were replaced by new electric bells, but in some houses which couldn’t be bothered (or couldn’t afford) to replace the old systems, the traditional cable-and-pulley system remained in operation still.
And that’s just the inside staff! Tack on a coachman or chauffeur, stable-boys, and gardeners and you’re looking at a staff upwards of 15 or 20 people at least, to serve a family consisting of maybe – six or eight members. By the early 20th century, as an industry, domestic service (or being ‘in service’, as it was called) was THE largest single employer in Britain.
The Country House in the 20th Century
By the early 1900s, the country house was just about ticking over. Money from dollar princesses, wiser investments and careful money management had just about staved off the wrecking ball, but not for everyone.
Remember how I said that in the 1600s and 1700s and early 1800s, country houses were being built bigger and grander and more luxurious every passing week?
By the 1880s and 1900s, such grandeur was considered excessive…and expensive! It was during this time that some grand country houses started being demolished! Families either moved into a smaller villa on the estate, or just gave up country living altogether, and moved to London to their townhouse in Belgravia or Mayfair.
Nevertheless, country house living was still a thing in the early 20th century. With money to burn, some houses were modernised. Plumbed bathrooms with hot water were installed, electrical wiring was set into the walls, gas fittings and oil-lamps were replaced by switches, wall-sconces and pendant lights. In some houses, even telephones were installed. Coachmen, stable-boys and the park drag coach soon got the boot, to be replaced by a chauffeur, mechanic, and the new Rolls Royce open touring-car.
1910s Rolls Royce Silver Ghost Touring Car. One of the most sought-after automobiles of the early 20th century.
The early 1900s was rapidly becoming the end of an era, though. As noted historian Ruth Goodman said, the Edwardian era was “the last great blast of country house living“.
The country house lifestyle was living on borrowed time by the Edwardian era. Rising taxation and then the Great War in 1914, kicked it in the knees and it was now starting to stumble. Servants left to find better and more stable work in shops, offices, factories, on the railroads and other industries. Domestic service was becoming much less appealing as a career by the 1900s.
Part of the problem was the extremely – EXTREMELY long work-hours; 16-18 hour workdays almost every day of the week were normal for most servants, and time off was very, very limited. On top of that, wages just could not compare with what someone might earn working in an office, a shop, running their own business etc, where there was more flexibility in hours and time off. When the war came, thousands of male servants chucked it in, rushed off to enlist, and, whether they survived the war or not, most never came back!
The kitchen at The Breakers, one of the many grand Belle Epoque mansions constructed for, and lived in by, the stupendously wealthy Vanderbilt family. Here, meals for the entire household – upstairs, for the family, and downstairs, for the servants, would’ve been produced, at least three times a day, every day of the year.
The interwar boom known as the Roaring Twenties kept the country house chugging along for another decade or so, but the writing was on the wall. High taxation after the war, and a significant reduction in the manpower required to run a country house estate – even with modern conveniences – meant that they were getting more and more expensive to operate, and as Lady Grantham’s mother said, “These houses were built for another age“. And she wasn’t kidding!
Rear view of ‘The Breakers’, the Vanderbilt family’s mansion at Newport, in Rhode Island, now owned by the Preservation Society of Newport County.
The Crash of 1929 hit a lot of country house owners hard. With heirs lost in the Great War, and now family fortunes on the line (once again) because of the coming of the Great Depression, it was just getting harder, and harder, and harder to enjoy – let alone maintain – the country house lifestyle. It was during this time that many country house owners sold up, packed up, and moved out. Houses were demolished, turned into schools, office-buildings, hospitals and hotels. But worse was yet to come.
The End of the Country House Lifestyle
The final nail in the coffin for the country house lifestyle was the Second World War. Rationing, bombing, evacuations, lack of funds, lack of manpower, and rising taxation after the war meant that the country house way of living was just impossible to maintain, or continue.
By the 1930s and 40s, and certainly by the 1950s, the whole idea of living in a grand country house, waited on by an army of servants – was rapidly being seen as increasingly outdated and old-fashioned. People just didn’t live like that anymore, didn’t work like that anymore! As the years clocked by, country house living was seen as some sort of relic, a grand remembrance from the lavish excesses of the Victorian age, but in no way applicable to people living modern lives in the postwar period.
Demolished almost in its entirety, the palatial Trentham Hall was one of the first grand English country houses to be pulled down, in the early 1900s. This painting dates to 1880, when the house was already in decline.
Finding domestic servants to run the houses was almost impossible now, and unless you were stinking rich – and could remain stinking rich for the rest of your life, come what may, paying servants was getting harder and harder and harder.
The plight of many old English country houses was summed up in the famous Noel Coward song “The Stately Homes of England“. Although meant to be comical, the song graphically outlines just how desperate some country house owners were to do anything to keep their old family estates together, including selling off absolutely anything “with assistance from the Jews, we’ve been able to dispose of rows, and rows, and rows of Gainsboroughs, and Lawrences, some sporting prints of Aunt Florence’s, some of which, were rather rude!” and that “although the Van Dykes have to go, and we’ve pawned the Bechstein grand, we’ll stand by the stately homes of England!”
It was during the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s that a lot of the grandest country houses were consigned to history. Demolished, repurposed, sold off, or simply abandoned, it was up to national historic trusts, social history groups and historical preservation societies to step up to the plate.
In England, the National Trust, in Australia, the National Trust of Australia, and in America, entities such as the Rhode Island Historical Society, and the National Register of Historic Places all rushed to snatch up, preserve and protect grand country houses. In England, Scotland and Wales, surviving country houses are mostly looked after by the National Trust (usually gifted to the Trust by families who no longer wished to live there). In America, the Rhode Island Historical Society protects and preserves the grand villas or ‘cottages’ (as they were euphemistically called, so as not to be seen as being too ostentatious…) which the wealthy of the Gilded Age and the Belle Epoque built on the island’s coastline.
The Country House Lifestyle Today
Although the upstairs-downstairs, masters-and-servants lifestyle of yesteryear is now little more than a distant memory, what is life like inside grand country houses today? Do any of them still exist anymore?
Actually, yes they do! A number of grand country houses (both in the UK and abroad) are still lived in and operated as private homes (some even by their original families), today. However, as was the case a hundred-over years ago, living in an old, grand country house is still a major hassle. It was a hassle 100 years ago when these houses were 100, 200 years old…now it’s even MORE of a hassle when some of them can be 300, 400 years old! The biggest hassle by far, is just the sheer upkeep required. Guttering, roofing, windows, heating, plumbing…trying to get effective rewiring done on a gigantic house is hard enough – imagine how much harder it is when it was built 300 years ago!
As an example – Buckingham Palace recently underwent rewiring, and miles and miles and MILES of antique gutta-percha and cloth electrical cords were stripped out, to be replaced by safer, and more reliable modern cabling and wiring. Imagine how much that costs – and that’s for a building that’s in regular use with regular maintenance…
Living in a Grand Country House Today
Living in a grand country house today comes with many, many challenges. Chief among these is just the sheer upkeep required to keep the house standing. Remember that many of these places are now centuries old and require constant maintenance. Gutters, roofing, heating, plumbing, electronics, gas supplies…another burden is taxation, and at some times, even the limitations placed on what can be done to the house under local historical preservation laws.
But that aside, do people still live in grand country houses?
“Althorp”, the country manor which is the traditional home of the Spencer Family. Princess Diana lived here before her marriage. It remains in the Spencer family to this day.
Amazingly – yes, some do. The Spencer family (famous members include Princess Diana and Winston Churchill) still live at Althorp, their country seat, and Princess Diana grew up and lived there before her famous marriage to Prince Charles. Another famous country house which is still inhabited by the original family is Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. In the 1800s and early 1900s, Chatsworth was a very popular hangout for British aristocracy, and even British royalty – King Edward VII, son of Queen Victoria, was a frequent guest there.
Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, built in the early 1500s.
Chatsworth House is the country seat of the family which holds the title of the Dukes of Devonshire. Since the mid-1500s, that’s been the Cavendish family…and they’ve lived there ever since, including during a particularly scary year of English history – 1665.
For those not up on their English history, 1665 was the year of the Great Plague of London. During this time, the plague spread (through contaminated cloth) to the village of Eyam (“Eem“), just a few miles from Chatsworth. Within a couple of weeks, the entire village was infested with the plague and to prevent a nationwide pandemic, the village leaders ordered that everybody in the village had to adhere to a strict quarantine. Nobody in, nobody out, until the disease had run its course, and the quarantine could be lifted.
Of course, the villagers could not do this alone. The Earl of Devonshire (as the head of the Cavendish family was, at the time), as the local landowner, felt sympathy for the villagers and agreed to provide whatever assistance he could offer. In exchange for silver coins washed in vinegar, he would send deliveries of food, drink and medicine to the village common at regular intervals (but always at night), in order to give the infected villagers the bare necessities to keep going.
Eyam is now famous as the plague village, because despite the ravages of the Black Death, a disease so infectious that even today, it is only studied under STRICT controls – a surprisingly large number of villagers survived, and it was the Earl of Devonshire, operating from nearby Chatsworth House, which aided in this miracle.
That particular earl (William Cavendish), was later promoted to the Duke of Devonshire (the title they hold today) by King William III (of ‘William & Mary’ fame) in 1694, for his assistance in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which saw the much-hated Stuart, King James II, kicked off the English throne, to be taken by William of Orange and his wife, Queen Mary.
Anyway…enough of 17th century English history, the black death, and the Glorious Revolution. We digress…
Biltmore Estate (photographed here in 1900) is the largest privately owned home in the entire United States. It still stands today and it’s still owned by the Vanderbilt Family.
In a word – yes, there are still grand country manors (both in England and elsewhere, such as Australia, France, Germany, America and Canada, to name a few) which are still lived in by families and run as private homes. In some cases, they’re even still lived in by the ORIGINAL families which built the house when it was new (although this is very rare). But that said, most grand country houses now survive as a mix of half-house, half-business. In order to fund the maintenance and restoration of the house, most families which still live in them usually also operate them as businesses – either renting out spaces for parties, weddings, anniversaries, receptions, or as filming locations for period dramas and movies (as mentioned previously, Highclere Castle has fulfilled this role many, many times – check Wikipedia for a full list of the castle’s film credits, which are quite extensive).
Will grand country-house living ever return?
Honestly? I doubt it. While it’s very elegant and refined and reeks of upper-class sophistication, the fact of the matter is that it’s a lifestyle that is extremely hard on the wallet. Unless you’re a billionaire who’s making millions every day, and can afford to keep a full-time army of, live-in domestic staff to run the house, then honestly…no.
That’s not to say that some people don’t do it, as seen above, there are some houses which are still used in this way, but they’re very much the minority. Most people – even most people with the money to do it – would generally prefer not to, just because of the expense, but also because most people just don’t live their lives that way anymore, even if they did have the money to not only maintain it, but also enjoy it. The days of upstairs and downstairs, servants bells, footmen and butlers, of servants halls and bringing the car round to the front of the house after an evening’s entertainment.
Today, it’s a lifestyle and a way of life that exists in novels and movies, TV shows and historical romances. As the movie says…
“…Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream to be remembered. A civilization gone with the wind“.
