During the Reign of George IV: The Shrigley Abduction, a Well-Developed Scheme to Marry an Heiress

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Shrigley abduction was an 1826 British case of a forced marriage by Edward Gibbon Wakefield to the 15-year-old heiress Ellen Turner of Pott Shrigley. The couple were married in Gretna Green, Scotland, and travelled to Calais before Turner’s father was able to notify the authorities and intervene. The marriage was annulled by Parliament, and Turner was legally married two years later, at the age of 17, to a wealthy neighbour of her class. Both Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his brother William, who had aided him, were convicted at trial and sentenced to three years in prison.

Background
Ellen Turner was the daughter and only child of William Turner, a wealthy resident of Pott Shrigley, Cheshire, England, who owned calico printing and spinning mills. At the time of the abduction, Turner was a High Sheriff of Cheshire. He lived in Shrigley Hall, near Macclesfield. Fifteen years old heiress, Ellen Turner attracted the interest of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. He conspired with his brother William Wakefield to marry her for her inheritance.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield was 30 years old; he had been a King’s Messenger (diplomatic courier) as a teenager, and later became a diplomat. At the age of 20, he had eloped to Scotland with a 17-year-old heiress, Eliza Pattle. Her mother accepted the marriage and settled £70,000 on the young couple.

Eliza died four years later in 1820 after giving birth to her third child. Wakefield had political ambitions and wanted more money. He tried to break his father-in-law’s will and was suspected of perjury and forgery. He appeared to have based his plan to marry Ellen Turner on the expectation that her parents would respond as the Mrs Pattle had.

False Summons
On 7 March 1827, Wakefield sent his servant Edward Thevenot with a carriage to Liverpool, where Ellen was a pupil at a boarding school. Thevenot presented a message to the Misses Daulby, the mistresses of the school. (The Misses Daulby were the daughters of Daniel Daulby, a well-known Liverpool collector and author of The Collected Works of Rembrandt (1796).) The message stated that Mrs Turner had become paralyzed and wished to see her daughter immediately. The Misses Daulby were initially suspicious of the fact that Ellen did not recognize Thevenot, but eventually let him take her away.
Thevenot took Ellen Turner to Manchester and the Hotel Albion to meet Wakefield. Wakefield told her her father’s business had collapsed, and Wakefield had agreed to take her to Carlisle, where Turner had supposedly fled to escape his creditors.

The party proceeded to Kendal, where the next day Wakefield told Ellen her father was a fugitive. He claimed two banks had agreed that some of her father’s estate would be transferred to her or, to be exact, her husband. He said his banker uncle had proposed Wakefield marry Ellen, and if she would agree to marry him, her father would be saved. Ellen allowed them to take her to Carlisle. There they met Edward’s brother William Wakefield, who claimed to have spoken to Turner and gotten his agreement to the marriage.

Ellen finally consented and the Wakefields took her over the border of Scotland to Gretna Green, a favored place of elopement for those who wanted to exploit the less strict marriage laws of Scotland. There Ellen and Edward were married by blacksmith David Laing.

They returned to Carlisle, where Ellen said she wanted to see her father. Wakefield agreed to take her to Shrigley, but instead took her to Leeds. Wakefield then claimed he had a meeting in Paris he could not postpone and had to go to France by way of London. He sent his brother off, ostensibly to invite Turner to meet them in London. Wakefield and Ellen continued to London. In London, Wakefield, accompanied by Ellen, pretended to inquire after his brother and Turner. At Blake’s Hotel, a valet told them Turner and Wakefield had gone to France. Edward Wakefield and Ellen had to follow them, and he took her to Calais.

Suspicions Arise
After a few days, Miss Daulby became concerned. Turner and his wife received a letter from Wakefield, stating he had married Ellen. Wakefield may have expected the Turners to accept the marriage rather than face a public scandal. Instead, Turner went to London and asked for help from the Foreign Secretary. Learning his daughter had been taken to the European mainland, Turner sent his brother to Calais, accompanied by a police officer and a solicitor. There they soon found the couple staying in an hotel.

Wakefield claimed since they were legally married, Ellen could not be taken from him by force. After interviewing the girl, the French authorities let her leave the country with her uncle. Wakefield wrote a statement attesting that Ellen was still a virgin, and he left for Paris.

Arrest and Trial
The British Foreign Secretary had issued a warrant for the Wakefields’ arrest; William was arrested in Dover a couple of days later. He was taken to Cheshire, where magistrates debated his offence. They committed him to Lancaster Castle to await trial. The Court of King’s Bench later released him on £2,000 bail and two sureties of £1,000 each.

Edward Thevenot and the Wakefields’ stepmother Frances were indicted as accomplices. Both brothers and their stepmother appeared in court and pled “not guilty.” Thevenot, who was still in France, was indicted for felony in absentia. On 23 March 1827 all three defendants were put on trial in Lancaster. The jury found all guilty the same day. They were committed to Lancaster Castle the following day.

On 14 May the Wakefields were taken to the Court of King’s Bench in Westminster Hall in London. William testified his actions were guided by his brother. Edward Wakefield swore the legal expenses had exceeded £3,000. The court sentenced the brothers to three years in prison, Edward in Newgate and William in Lancaster Castle. Frances Wakefield was released. The marriage was later annulled by Act of Parliament.

Aftermath
After his release, Edward Wakefield became active in prison reform. He became involved in colonial affairs, and had roles in the development of South Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. William Wakefield became an early leader in the colonization of New Zealand.

William Turner was elected Member of Parliament for Blackburn as a Whig in 1832, serving until 1841. At the age of 17, Ellen Turner married Thomas Legh, a wealthy neighbour. She died in childbirth at the age of 19 and was survived by a daughter.

Posted in British history, Great Britain, legends and myths, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities, Victorian era, William IV | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Regency Structures: The Burlington Arcade

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

300px-Burlington_Arcade,_north_entrance The Burlington Arcade is a covered shopping arcade in London that runs behind Bond Street from Piccadilly through to Burlington Gardens. It is one of the precursors of the mid-19th-century European shopping gallery and the modern shopping centre. The Burlington Arcade was built “for the sale of jewellery and fancy articles of fashionable demand, for the gratification of the public.”

The arcade was built to the order of Lord George Cavendish, younger brother of the 5th Duke of Devonshire, who had inherited the adjacent Burlington House, on what had been the side garden of the house and was reputedly to prevent passers-by throwing oyster shells and other rubbish over the wall of his home. His architect was Samuel Ware. The Arcade opened in 1819. It consisted of a single straight top-lit walkway lined with seventy-two small two storey units. Some of the units have now been combined, reducing the number of shops to around forty. The ponderous Piccadilly façade in a late version of Victorian Mannerism was added in the early 20th century.

The pedestrian arcade, with smart uniform shop fronts under a glazed roof, has always been an upmarket retail location. It is patrolled by Burlington Arcade Beadles in traditional uniforms including top hats and frockcoats. The original beadles were all former members of Lord George Cavendish’s regiment, the 10th Hussars. Present tenants include a range of clothing, footwear and accessory shops, art and antique dealers and the jewellers and dealers in antique silver for which the Arcade is best known.

The Burlington Arcade was the successful prototype for larger glazed shopping arcades, beginning with the Saint-Hubert Gallery in Brussels and The Passage in St Petersburg, the first of Europe’s grand arcades, to the Galleria Umberto I in Naples or the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan.

The sedate atmosphere of the Burlington Arcade was interrupted in 1964 when a Jaguar Mark X charged down the arcade, scattering pedestrians, and six masked men leapt out, smashed the windows of the Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Association shop and stole jewellery valued at £35,000. They were never caught.

In Popular Culture
The Arcade is used as a location in the first episode of the Danish TV drama Borgen.
Burlington Arcade was used as a location for the 1998 film The Parent Trap.
Burlington Arcade was used as a location in “The Veiled Lady,” a 1990 production of the Agatha Christie short story of the same name.

Posted in British history, buildings and structures, Great Britain, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Victorian era | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Regency Celebrity: Rev William Buckland, Palaeonthologist and Author of First Full Account of a Fossil Dinosaur

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Yesterday, we learned something of the Red Lady of Pavilian. Today, I thought we should have a look at the Red Lady’s discoverer.

220px-William_Buckland_c1845 The Very Rev. Dr William Buckland DD FRS (12 March 1784 – 14 August 1856) was an English theologian who became Dean of Westminster, and a geologist and palaeontologist, who wrote the first full account of a fossil dinosaur, which he named Megalosaurus. His work proving that Kirkdale Cave had been a prehistoric hyena den, for which he was awarded the Copley Medal, was widely praised as an example of how detailed scientific analysis could be used to understand geohistory by reconstructing events from deep time.

He was a pioneer in the use of fossilized faeces, for which he coined the term coprolites, to reconstruct ancient ecosystems. Buckland was a proponent of the Gap Theory that interpreted the Biblical account of Genesis as referring to two separate episodes of creation separated by a lengthy period; it emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a way to reconcile the scriptural account with discoveries in geology that suggested the earth was very old. Early in his career he believed he had found geologic evidence of the Biblical flood, but later became convinced the glaciation theory of Louis Agassiz provided a better explanation, and he played an important role in promoting that theory in Great Britain.

Early Life and University
Buckland was born at Axminster in Devon and, as a child, would accompany his father, the Rector of Templeton and Trusham, on his walks where interest in road improvements led to collecting fossil shells, including ammonites, from the Jurassic lias rocks exposed in local quarries.

He was educated first at Blundell’s School, Tiverton, Devon, and then at Winchester College, from where in 1801 he won a scholarship to study for the ministry at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he also attended the lectures of John Kidd on mineralogy and chemistry, as well as developing an interest in geology and carrying out field research on strata, during vacations.

Having taken his BA in 1804, he went on to obtain his MA degree in 1808. He then became a Fellow of Corpus Christi in 1809, was ordained as a priest, and continued to make frequent geological excursions, on horseback, to various parts of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. In 1813, he was appointed reader in mineralogy, in succession to John Kidd, giving lively and popular lectures with increasing emphasis on geology and palaeontology. As (unofficial) curator of the Ashmolean Museum, he built up collections, touring Europe and coming into contact with scientists including Georges Cuvier.

Rejection of Flood Geology and Kirkdale Cave
In 1818, Buckland was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. That year he persuaded the Prince Regent to endow an additional Readership, this time in Geology, and he became the first holder of the new appointment, delivering his inaugural address on 15 May 1819. This was published in 1820 as Vindiciæ Geologiæ; or the Connexion of Geology with Religion explained, both justifying the new science of geology and reconciling geological evidence with the Biblical accounts of creation and Noah’s Flood.

At a time when others were coming under the opposing influence of James Hutton’s theory of uniformitarianism, Buckland developed a new hypothesis that the word “beginning” in Genesis meant an undefined period between the origin of the earth and the creation of its current inhabitants, during which a long series of extinctions and successive creations of new kinds of plants and animals had occurred. Thus, his catastrophism theory incorporated a version of Old Earth creationism or Gap creationism. Buckland believed in a global deluge during the time of Noah but was not a supporter of flood geology as he believed only a small amount of the strata could have been formed in the single year occupied by the deluge.

From his investigations of fossil bones at Kirkdale Cave, in Yorkshire, he concluded that the cave had actually been inhabited by hyaenas in antediluvian times, and the fossils were the remains of those hyaenas and the animals they had eaten, rather than being remains of animals that had perished in the Flood and then carried from the tropics by the surging waters, as he and others had at first thought.

In 1822 he wrote:
It must already appear probable, from the facts above described, particularly from the comminuted state and apparently gnawed condition of the bones, that the cave in Kirkdale was, during a long succession of years, inhabited as a den of hyaenas, and that they dragged into its recesses the other animal bodies whose remains are found mixed indiscriminately with their own: this conjecture is rendered almost certain by the discovery I made, of many small balls of the solid calcareous excrement of an animal that had fed on bones… It was at first sight recognized by the keeper of the Menagerie at Exter Change, as resembling, in both form and appearance, the faeces of the spotted or cape hyaena, which he stated to be greedy of bones beyond all other beasts in his care.

While criticized by some, Buckland’s analysis of Kirkland Cave and other bone caves was widely seen as a model for how careful analysis could be used to reconstruct the Earth’s past, and the Royal Society awarded Buckland the Copley Medal in 1822 for his paper on Kirkdale Cave. At the presentation the society’s president, Humphry Davy, said:

by these inquiries, a distinct epoch has, as it were, been established in the history of the revolutions of our globe: a point fixed from which our researches may be pursued through the immensity of ages, and the records of animate nature, as it were, carried back to the time of the creation.

While Buckland’s analysis convinced him that the Bones found in Kirkdale Cave had not been washed into the cave by a global flood, he still believed the thin layer of mud that covered the remains of the hyaena den had been deposited in the subsequent ‘Universal Deluge.’ He developed these ideas into his great scientific work Reliquiæ Diluvianæ, or, Observations on the Organic Remains attesting the Action of a Universal Deluge, which was published in 1823 and became a best seller. However, over the next decade as geology continued to progress, Buckland changed his mind. In his famous Bridgewater Treatise, published in 1836, he acknowledged that the Biblical account of Noah’s flood could not be confirmed using geological evidence.

By 1840 he was very actively promoting the view that what had been interpreted as evidence of the ‘Universal Deluge’ two decades earlier, and subsequently of deep submergence by a new generation of geologists such as Charles Lyell, was in fact evidence of a major glaciation.

Megalosaurus and Marriage
He continued to live in Corpus Christi College and, in 1824, he became president of the Geological Society of London. Here he announced the discovery, at Stonesfield, of fossil bones of a giant reptile which he named Megalosaurus (great lizard) and wrote the first full account of what would later be called a dinosaur.

In 1825, Buckland resigned his college fellowship: he planned to take up the living of Stoke Charity in Hampshire but, before he could take up the appointment, he was made a Canon of Christ Church, a rich reward for academic distinction without serious administrative responsibilities. In December of that year he married Mary Morland of Abingdon, Oxfordshire, an accomplished illustrator and collector of fossils. Their honeymoon was a year touring Europe, with visits to famous geologists and geological sites. She continued to assist him in his work, as well as having nine children, five of whom survived to adulthood. His son Frank Buckland became a well-known practical naturalist, author, and Inspector of Salmon Fisheries. On one occasion, Mary helped him decipher footmarks, found in a slab of sandstone, by covering the kitchen table with paste, while he fetched their pet tortoise and confirmed his intuition, that tortoise footprints matched the fossil marks.

His passion for scientific observation and experiment extended to his home life. Not only was his house filled with specimens – animal as well as mineral, live as well as dead – but he claimed to have eaten his way through the animal kingdom: zoophagy. The most distasteful items were mole and bluebottle; panther, crocodile and mouse were among the other dishes noted by guests. Augustus Hare, a famous English raconteur and contemporary, recalled, “Talk of strange relics led to mention of the heart of a French King preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. Dr. Buckland, whilst looking at it, exclaimed, ‘I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before,’ and, before anyone could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost for ever.” The heart in question is said to have been that of Louis XIV. Buckland was followed in this bizarre hobby by his son Frank.

The Red Lady of Paviland
On 18th January 1823 Buckland climbed down to Paviland Cave, where he discovered a skeleton which he named the Red Lady of Paviland, as he at first supposed it to be the remains of a local prostitute. It is the oldest anatomically modern human found in the United Kingdom. Although he found the skeleton in Paviland Cave in the same strata as the bones of extinct mammals (including mammoth), Buckland shared the view of Georges Cuvier that no humans had coexisted with any extinct animals, and he attributed the skeleton’s presence there to a grave having been dug in historical times, possibly by the same people who had constructed some nearby pre-Roman fortifications, into the older layers. Carbon-data tests have since dated the skeleton, now known to be male as from circa 33,000 years before present (BP).

Coprolites and the Lias Food Chain
The fossil hunter Mary Anning had noticed that stony objects known as “bezoar stones” were often found in the abdominal region of ichthyosaur skeletons found in the Lias formation at Lyme Regis. She also noted that if such stones were broken open they often contained fossilized fish bones and scales as well as sometimes bones from small ichthyosaurs. These observations by Anning led Buckland to propose in 1829 that the stones were fossilized feces and coin the name coprolite, which came to be the general name for all fossilized feces, for them. Buckland also concluded that the spiral markings on the fossils indicated that ichthyosaurs had spiral ridges in their intestines similar to those of modern sharks, and that some of these coprolites were black because the ichthyosaur had ingested ink sacs from belemnites. He wrote a vivid description of the liasic food chain based on these observations, which would inspire Henry De la Beche to paint Duria Antiquior, the first pictorial representation of a scene from deep time. After De le Beche had a lithographic print made based on his original watercolour, Buckland kept a supply of the prints on hand to circulate at his lectures. He also discussed other similar objects found in other formations, including the fossilized hyena dung he had found in Kirkdale Cave. He concluded:

In all these various formations our Coprolites form records of warfare, waged by successive generations of inhabitants of our planet on one another: the imperishable phosphate of lime, derived from their digested skeletons, has become embalmed in the substance and foundations of the everlasting hills; and the general law of Nature which bids all to eat and be eaten in their turn, is shown to have been co-extensive with animal existence on our globe; the Carnivora in each period of the world’s history fulfilling their destined office, — to check excess in the progress of life, and maintain the balance of creation.

Buckland had been helping and encouraging Roderick Murchison for some years and in 1831 was able to suggest a very good starting point in South Wales for Murchison’s researches into the rocks beneath the secondary strata associated with the age of reptiles. Murchison would later name these older strata, characterized by marine invertebrate fossils, as Silurian after a tribe that had lived in that area centuries earlier. In 1832 Buckland presided over the second meeting of the British Association, which was then held at Oxford.

Bridgewater Treatise
Buckland was commissioned to contribute one of the set of eight Bridgewater Treatises, “On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation.” This took him almost five years’ work and was published in 1836 with the title Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology. His volume included a detailed compendium of his theories of day-age, gap theory and a form of progressive creationism where faunal succession revealed by the fossil record was explained by a series of successive divine creations that prepared the earth for humans. In the introduction he expressed the argument from design by asserting that the families and phyla of biology were “clusters of contrivance”:

The myriads of petrified Remains which are disclosed by the researches of Geology all tend to prove that our Planet has been occupied in times preceding the Creation of the Human Race, by extinct species of Animals and Vegetables, made up, like living Organic Bodies, of ‘Clusters of Contrivances,’ which demonstrate the exercise of stupendous Intelligence and Power. They further show that these extinct forms of Organic Life were so closely allied, by Unity in the principles of their construction, to Classes, Orders, and Families, which make up the existing Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms, that they not only afford an argument of surpassing force, against the doctrines of the Atheist and Polytheist; but supply a chain of connected evidence, amounting to demonstration, of the continuous Being, and of many of the highest Attributes of the One Living and True God.

Following Charles Darwin’s return from the Beagle voyage, Buckland discussed with him the Galapagos Land Iguanas and Marine Iguanas. He subsequently recommended Darwin’s paper on the role of earthworms in soil formation for publication, praising it as “a new & important theory to explain Phenomena of universal occurrence on the surface of the Earth—in fact a new Geological Power”, while rightly rejecting Darwin’s suggestion that chalkland could have been formed in a similar way.

Glaciation Theory
By this time Buckland was a prominent and influential scientific celebrity and a friend of the Tory prime minister, Sir Robert Peel. In co-operation with Adam Sedgwick and Charles Lyell, he prepared the report leading to the establishment of the Geological Survey of Great Britain.

Having become interested in the theory of Louis Agassiz, that polished and striated rocks as well as transported material, had been caused by ancient glaciers, he travelled to Switzerland, in 1838, to meet Agassiz and see for himself. He was convinced and was reminded of what he had seen in Scotland, Wales and northern England but had previously attributed to the Flood. When Agassiz came to Britain for the Glasgow meeting of the British Association, in 1840, they went on an extended tour of Scotland and found evidence there of former glaciation. In that year Buckland had become president of the Geological Society again and, despite their hostile reaction to his presentation of the theory, he was now satisfied that glaciation had been the origin of much of the surface deposits covering Britain.

In 1845 he was appointed by Sir Robert Peel to the vacant Deanery of Westminster (he succeeded Samuel Wilberforce). Soon after, he was inducted to the living of Islip, near Oxford, a preferment attached to the deanery. As Dean and head of Chapter, Buckland was involved in repair and maintenance of Westminster Abbey and in preaching suitable sermons to the rural population of Islip, while continuing to lecture on geology at Oxford. In 1847, he was appointed a trustee in the British Museum and, in 1848, he was awarded the Wollaston Medal, by the Geological Society of London.

Illness and Death
Around the end of 1850, he contracted a disease which increasingly disabled him until his death in 1856. Post-mortem examination identified a tubercular infection of the upper cervical vertebrae which had spread to the brain.

The plot for his grave had been reserved but, when the gravedigger set to work, it was found that an outcrop of solid Jurassic limestone lay just below ground level and explosives had to be used for excavation. This may have been a last jest by the noted geologist, reminiscent of Richard Whatley’s Elegy intended for Professor Buckland written in 1820:
Where shall we our great Professor inter
That in peace may rest his bones?
If we hew him a rocky sepulchre
He’ll rise and break the stones
And examine each stratum that lies around
For he’s quite in his element underground
The standard author abbreviation Buckland is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.

Known Eccentricities
Buckland was known for keeping various exotic animals inside his house. He was also determined to eat every known animal. Buckland preferred to do his field palaeontology and geological work wearing an academic gown.

Posted in British history, George IV, Great Britain, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities, South Wales, Wales, William IV | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

During the Reign of George IV: The Red Lady of Paviland 1823, The World’s First Human Fossil Found

Posted on October 21, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Red Lady of Paviland is a fairly complete Upper Paleolithic-era human male skeleton dyed in red ochre. Discovered in 1823 it is the first human fossil to have been found anywhere in the world, and at 33,000 years old is still the oldest ceremonial burial of a modern human ever discovered anywhere in Western Europe. The bones were discovered between 18 and 25 January 1823 by Rev. William Buckland, during an archaeological dig at Goat’s Hole Cave; one of the limestone caves between Port Eynon and Rhossili, on the Gower Peninsula, south Wales.

Buckland believed the remains to be those of a female, dating to Roman Britain. However, later analysis of the remains showed them to have been of a young male, and the most recent re-calibrated radiocarbon dating in 2009 indicates that the skeleton can be dated to around 33,000 years before present (BP). The other key paleolithic sites in the UK are Happisburgh, Pakefield, Boxgrove, Swanscombe, Pontnewydd, Kents Cavern, and Creswell Crags.

Discovery
In 1822, Daniel Davies and the Rev John Davies, respectively surgeon and curate at Port Eynon on the south coast of Gower, explored the cave and found animal bones, including the tusk of a mammoth. The Talbot family of Penrice Castle was informed and Miss Mary Theresa Talbot, then the oldest unmarried daughter, joined an expedition to the site and found ‘bones of elephants’ on 27 December 1822.

220px-William_Buckland_c1845 William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University and a correspondent of that well-connected family, was contacted. He arrived on 18 January 1823 and spent a week at Goat’s Hole – a week in which his famous discovery took place.

Later that year, writing about his find in his book Reliquiae Diluvianae (Evidence of the Flood), Buckland stated:

“I found the skeleton enveloped by a coating of a kind of ruddle … which stained the earth, and in some parts extended itself to the distance of about half an inch [12 mm] around the surface of the bones … Close to that part of the thigh bone where the pocket is usually worn surrounded also by ruddle [were] about two handfuls of the Nerita littoralis [periwinkle shells]. At another part of the skeleton, viz in contact with the ribs [were] forty or fifty fragments of ivory rods [also] some small fragments of rings made of the same ivory and found with the rods … Both rods and rings, as well as the Nerite shells, were stained superficially with red, and lay in the same red substance that enveloped the bones.”

When Buckland first discovered the skeleton in 1823, he misjudged both its age and its sex. As a creationist, Buckland believed no human remains could have been older than the Biblical Great Flood, and thus wildly underestimated its true age, believing the remains to date back to the Roman era.

Buckland believed the skeleton was female in large part because it was discovered with decorative items, including perforated seashell necklaces and jewellery thought to be of elephant ivory but now known to be carved from the tusk of a mammoth. These decorative items combined with the skeleton’s red dye caused Buckland to mistakenly speculate the remains belonged to a Roman prostitute or witch.

Findings
The “lady” has since been identified as a man, probably no older than 21. His are the oldest anatomically modern human remains found in the United Kingdom, as well as the oldest known ceremonial burial in Western Europe. The skeleton was found along with a mammoth’s skull, which has since been lost. Scholars now believe he may have been a tribal chieftain. The next human remains found in Britain, of Cheddar Man, are much younger and separated by the period of the Ice Age.

By the time a second archaeological excavation was undertaken to Paviland Cave in 1912, it was recognized through comparison with other discoveries that had been made in Europe, that the remains were from the Palaeolithic – although before carbon dating was invented in the 1950s there was no way of determining the actual age of any prehistoric remains. Early carbon dating has tended to underestimate the age of samples and as radio carbon dating techniques have developed and become more and more accurate so the age of the Red Lady of Paviland has gradually been pushed back.

In the 1960s Kenneth Oakley published a radiocarbon determination made on the actual bones of the ‘Red Lady’ at 18,460 ± 340 BP. Tests made in 1989 and 1995 suggested he lived about 26,000 years ago (26,350 ± 550 BP, OxA-1815) at the end of the Upper Paleolithic Period. In 2007 a new examination of the remains by Dr Thomas Higham of Oxford University and Dr Roger Jacobi of the British Museum suggested they were 29,000 years old.

In 2009 a recalibration of the test results suggested an age of 33,000 years. Although now on the coast, at the time of the burial the cave would have been located approximately 70 miles inland, overlooking a plain. When the remains were dated to some 26,000 years ago it was thought the Red Lady lived at a time when an ice sheet of the most recent glacial period, in the British Isles called the Devensian Glaciation, would have been advancing towards the site, and that consequently the weather would have been more like that of present day Siberia, with maximum temperatures of perhaps 10°C in summer, -20° in winter, and a tundra vegetation. The new dating however indicates he lived at a warmer period.

Bone protein analysis indicates that the “lady” lived on a diet that consisted of between 15% and 20% fish, which, together with the distance from the sea, suggests that the people may have been semi-nomadic, or that the tribe transported the body from a coastal region for burial. Other food probably included mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and reindeer.

When the skeleton was first found, Wales had no museum in which to keep it, so it was housed at Oxford University, where Buckland was a professor. In December 2007 it was loaned for a year to the National Museum Cardiff. Subsequent excavations of the area in which the skeleton was found have yielded more than 4,000 flints, teeth and bones, and needles and bracelets, which are on exhibit at Swansea Museum and the National Museum in Cardiff.

Red Lady Arts Project
The story of the Red Lady was the focus of an arts project supported by a Steps to New Music Award from the Arts Council of Wales and premiered in Carmarthen, west Wales, on 1 April 2010. The project featured a cantata, “Y Dyn Unig” (The Lonely Man), composed by Andrew Powell, with libretto by Menna Elfyn, for tenor, harp, mixed choir, children’s chorus and brass band. The work was first performed by Robyn Lyn (tenor), Royal Harpist Claire Jones, Cor Seingar and the Burry Port Town Band, was conducted by Craig Roberts and presented by science author Mark Brake.

Posted in British history, George IV, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities, South Wales, Wales | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Regency Economic Disaster: The Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814

Posted on October 18, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814 was a hoax or fraud centered on false information about the then-ongoing Napoleonic Wars, affecting the London Stock Exchange in 1814.

The du Bourg Hoax
On the morning of Monday, 21 February 1814, a uniformed man posing as Colonel du Bourg, aide-du-camp to Lord Cathcart, arrived at the Ship Inn at Dover, England, bearing news that Napoleon I of France had been killed, and the Bourbons were victorious. Requesting that this information be relayed on to the Admiralty in London via semaphore telegraph, “Colonel du Bourg” proceeded on toward London, stopping at each inn on the way to spread the good news. At about noon, confirmation for the news of peace arrived in the form of another coach, which circulated throughout London, bearing three French officers who distributed leaflets celebrating the Bourbon victory.

Effects on the Stock Market
Rumors of Napoleon’s defeat had been circulating throughout the month, and the combined events had a significant impact on the London Stock Exchange. The value of government securities soared in the morning, after the news from Dover began to circulate among traders at the Exchange. Lacking official confirmation of the news, prices began to slide after the initial rush, only to be further propped up at noon by the French officers and their handbills.

However, the entire affair was a deliberate hoax. In the afternoon, the government confirmed that the news of peace was a fabrication. The affected stocks’ prices immediately sank to their previous levels.

Investigation
The Committee of the Stock Exchange, suspecting deliberate stock manipulation, launched an investigation into the hoax. It was soon discovered that there had been a sale that Monday of more than £1.1 million of two government-based stocks, most of it purchased the previous week. Three people connected with that purchase were charged with the fraud: Lord Cochrane, a Radical member of Parliament and well-known naval hero, his uncle the Hon. Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone, and Richard Butt, Lord Cochrane’s financial advisor. Captain Random de Berenger, who had posed both as du Bourg and as one of the French officers, was soon arrested, and a guilty verdict was returned against all three charged in the case. The chief conspirators were sentenced to twelve months of prison time, a fine of £1,000 each, and an hour in the public pillory. Lord Cochrane was also stripped of his naval rank and expelled from the Order of the Bath.

Culpability of Lord Cochrane
Though convicted of the fraud, Lord Cochrane continued to assert his innocence. In 1816, he brought an (unsuccessful) charge of “partiality, misrepresentation, injustice and oppression” against Lord Ellenborough, the presiding judge in his case. Popular opinion certainly backed Cochrane; his sentencing was followed by his re-election to the House of Commons for Westminster, and, due to public outcry over his treatment, the punishment of the pillory was officially discontinued in Britain.

Lord Cochrane continued to petition the government for redress; in 1832, he was granted a free pardon, including reinstatement to his rank of Rear Admiral. Restoration of the Order of the Bath and other honors followed in the subsequent decades, and, in 1877, a Select Committee found that his treatment since 1832 constituted “nothing less than a public recognition by those Governments of his innocence.”

Literary References
Security speculation based on allegedly accurate news delivered by semaphore telegraph forms a plot event in the novel The Count of Monte Cristo (published 1844).

The Great Stock Exchange Fraud forms the basis for the 11th novel in Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin series, The Reverse of the Medal (published 1986).

Lord Cochrane is a central figure in the end of my Jane Austen-inspired novel, Captain Wentworth’s Persuasion (published March 2010). JeffersCWP

Note! In the terminology of 1814, stocks refer to interest-bearing securities of the type that are today called bonds.

Posted in British history, buildings and structures, Great Britain, Living in the Regency, Napoleonic Wars, political stance, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Regency Happenings: The London Beer Flood of 1814

Posted on October 16, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The London Beer Flood happened on 16 October 1814 in the parish of St. Giles, London, England. At the Meux and Company Brewery[1] on Tottenham Court Road, a huge vat containing over 135,000 imperial gallons (610,000 L) of beer ruptured, causing other vats in the same building to succumb in a domino effect. As a result, more than 323,000 imperial gallons (1,470,000 L) of beer burst out and gushed into the streets. The wave of beer destroyed two homes and crumbled the wall of the Tavistock Arms Pub, trapping teenage employee Eleanor Cooper under the rubble.

History
The brewery was among the poor houses and tenements of the St Giles Rookery, where whole families lived in basement rooms that quickly filled with beer. At least seven people drowned in the flood or died from injuries.

The brewery was eventually taken to court over the accident, but the disaster was ruled to be an Act of God by the judge and jury, leaving no one responsible. The company found it difficult to cope with the financial implications of the disaster, with a significant loss of sales made worse because they had already paid duty on the beer. They made a successful application to Parliament reclaiming the duty which allowed them to continue trading.

The brewery was demolished in 1922, and today, the Dominion Theatre occupies a part of the site of the former brewery. In 2012, a local tavern the ‘Holborn Whippet’ has started to mark this event with a specially created vat of Porter brewed especially for the day.

Known Drowning Fatalities
Name…………….Age
Clint Scroggins……52
Eleanor Cooper….15-16
Hannah Bamfield…….4
Catherine Butler…..63
Elizabeth Smith……27
Mary Mulvey……….30
Thomas Mulvey………3

Posted in British history, buildings and structures, food and drink, Great Britain, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Late Regency Happening: The Controversial Beerhouse Act of 1830

Posted on October 15, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Beerhouse Act 1830 (11 Geo 4. and 1 Will 4. c. 64) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which liberalized the regulations governing the brewing and sale of beer. It was modified by subsequent legislation and finally repealed in 1993. It was one of the Licensing Acts 1828 to 1886.

The precursor to the Beerhouse Act was the Alehouse Act 1828 (9 Geo.4 c.61), which established a General Annual Licensing Meeting to be held in every city, town, division, county and riding, for the purposes of granting licences to inns, alehouses and victualling houses to sell exciseable liquors to be drunk on the premises.

Enacted two years later, the Beerhouse Act enabled anyone to brew and sell beer on payment of a licence costing two guineas, or £2.10 in modern currency. The intention was to increase competition between brewers, and it resulted in the opening of hundreds of new beerhouses, public houses and breweries throughout the country, particularly in the rapidly expanding industrial centres of the north of England. According to the Act itself, the Parliament considered it was “expedient for the better supplying the public with Beer in England, to give greater facilities for the sale thereof, than was then afforded by licences to keepers of Inns, Alehouses, and Victualling Houses.”

The Act’s supporters hoped that by increasing competition in the brewing and sale of beer, and thus lowering its price, the population might be weaned off more alcoholic drinks such as gin. But it proved to be controversial, removing as it did the monopoly of local magistrates to lucratively regulate local trade in alcohol, and not applying retrospectively to those who already ran public houses. It was also denounced as promoting drunkenness.

By 1841 licences under the new law had been issued to 45,500 commercial brewers. One factor in the Act was the dismantling provisions for detailed recording of licences, which were restored by subsequent regulatory legislation: the Wine and Beerhouse Act 1869 and the Wine and Beerhouse Act Amendment Act 1870. The Bill itself was often amended, notably in 1834 and 1840.

The final remaining provisions of the Act were repealed by Parliament on 11 November 1993, by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1993 (1993 c. 50), s. 1(1), Sch. 1 Pt. XIII GroupI. The passage of the Act during the reign of King William IV led to many taverns and public houses being named in his honour; he remains “the most popular monarch among pub names.”

Posted in British history, food and drink, Georgian Era, real life tales, Regency era | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

During the Reign of George IV: Apple Time with Cox’s Orange Pippin

Posted on October 14, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

In North Carolina, it is “apple time,” with loads of Apple Festivals across the state. Check out this article from The New York Times about Creigton Calhoun, Jr., of Pittsboro, NC, who “keeps ancient apples fresh and crisp.”

Mr. Calhoun is the author of a recently revised compendium of 1,800 antique apple varieties, called “Old Southern Apples.” He is also one of a cadre of collectors across the country who are passing on their own rare apples, through scions and grafted trees, to younger men and women starting nurseries or preservation orchards, or simply planting a few trees in the backyard.

He has given his collection to young growers like David C. Vernon, who now sells more than 400 heirloom apple varieties at Century Farm Orchards, in Reidsville, N.C., a farm that has been in his family since 1872.

“Lee taught me how to graft and provided me with most of his old varieties,” said Mr. Vernon, 40, who teaches high school chemistry.

Mr. Calhoun has also planted 800 trees — two of each in his collection — at Horne Creek Living Historical Farm in Pinnacle, N.C., north of Winston-Salem, in the northwestern Piedmont. Visitors can now see the difference between a semi-dwarf, free-standing tree and a dwarf tree of the same variety, espaliered or trained against wires. (Visit the NY Times website for the complete article.)

All that being said, you know I must relate even a topic such as “apples” to the Regency Period, for I write about the Regency in my novels. So, here is one of the apple cultivars, which began during the reign of George IV.

Cox’s Orange Pippin is an apple cultivar first grown in 1825, at Colnbrook in Buckinghamshire, England, by the retired brewer and horticulturist Richard Cox. Though the parentage of the cultivar is unknown, Ribston Pippin seems a likely candidate. The variety was introduced for sale by the 1850s by Mr. Charles Turner, and grown commercially from the 1860s, particularly in the Vale of Evesham in Worcestershire, and later in Kent.

220px-Cox_orange_renette2 Cox’s Orange Pippin is highly regarded due to its excellent flavor and attractive appearance. The apples are of medium size, orange-red in colour deepening to bright red and mottled with carmine over a deep yellow background. The flesh is very aromatic, yellow-white, fine-grained, crisp and very juicy. Cox’s flavour is sprightly subacid, with hints of cherry and anise, becoming softer and milder with age. When ripe apples are shaken, the seeds make a rattling sound as they are only loosely held in the apple’s flesh.

One of the best in quality of the English dessert apples; Cox’s Orange Pippin may be eaten out of hand or sliced. Not recommended for cooking, it cooks to a fine froth. Cox’s Orange Pippin is often blended with other varieties in the production of cider.

According to the Institute of Food Research, Cox’s Orange Pippin accounts for over 50% of the UK acreage of dessert apples. The tree is a moderate grower and is annually productive. However it can be difficult to grow in many environments and tends to be susceptible to diseases such as scab, mildew and canker. A testament to this is the fact that it is rarely grown commercially in North America. A number of sports of Cox’s Orange Pippin have been discovered over subsequent years and propagated. These retain “Cox” in their names, e.g., Cherry Cox, Crimson Cox, King Cox, Queen Cox. In addition to the cultivation of Cox sports, apple breeders have hybridised Cox with other varieties to improve vigour, disease resistance and yield while attempting to retain the unique qualities of Cox’s flavor.

Descendent Cultivars
Cultivar name (female parent × male parent)

Acme (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Unknown)
Alkmene (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Geheimrat Doktor Oldenburg)
Allington Pippin (Cox’s Orange Pippin × King of the Pippins)
Anna Boelens (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Freiherr von Berlepsch)
Arthur W. Barnes (Gascoyne’s Scarlet × Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Barnack Orange (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Barnack Beauty)
Barry (McIntosh × Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Bountiful (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Lane’s Prince Albert)
Carswell’s Honeydew (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Unknown)
Carswell’s Orange (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Unknown)
Charles Ross (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Peasgood Nonesuch)
Clopton Red (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Unknown)
Cobra (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Bramley’s Seedling)
Downton Pippin (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Golden Pippin)
Dukat (Golden Delicious × Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Dunning (Cox’s Orange Pippin × McIntosh)
Eden (John Standish × Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Edith Hopwood (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Unknown)
Ellison’s Orange (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Calville Blanc d’Ete)
Elstar (Golden Delicious x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Fiesta (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Idared)
Francis (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Unknown)
Freyburg (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Golden Delicious)
Gloucester Cross (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Unknown)
Golden Nugget (Golden Russet x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Hereford Cross (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Unknown)
Herefordshire Russet (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Idared)
High View Pippin (Sturmer Pippin x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Holstein (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Unknown)
Ingrid Marie (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Unknown)
James Grieve (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Potts’ Seedling)
Jupiter (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Starking Delicious)
Karmijn de Sonneville (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Jonathan)
Kent (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Jonathan)
Kidd’s Orange Red (Cox Orange Pippin x Red Delicious)
King George V (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Unknown)
Langley Pippin (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Gladstone)
Laxton’s Advance (Cox’s Orange Pippin × Gladstone)
Laxton’s Epicure (Wealthy x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Laxton’s Exquisite (Cellini x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Laxton’s Fortune (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Wealthy)
Laxton’s Pearmain (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Wyken Pippin)
Laxton’s Superb (Wyken Pippin x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Laxton’s Triumph (King of the Pippins x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Lynn’s Pippin (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Ellison’s Orange)
Meridien (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Falstaff)
Merton Beauty (Ellison’s Orange x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Merton Charm (McIntosh x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Merton Russet (Sturmer Pippin × Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Merton Worcester (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Worcester Pearmain)
Millicent Barnes (Gascoyne’s Scarlet x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Nuvar Cheerful Gold (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Golden Delicious)
Nuvar Freckles (Golden Delicious x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Orangenburg (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Esopus Spitzenburg)
Pixie (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Sunset)
Polly Prosser (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Duke of Devonshire)
Prince Charles (Lord Lambourne x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Prins Bernhard (Jonathan x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Red Windsor (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Alkmene)
Rival (Peasgood’s Nonsuch x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Rosy Blenheim (Blenheim Orange x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Rubens (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Unknown)
Rubinette (Golden Delicious x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Ruby (Thorrington) (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Unknown)
Saint Cecilia (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Unknown)
Saint Everard (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Margil)
Sunburn (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Unknown)
Suntan (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Court Pendu Plat)
Sunset (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Unknown)
Sweetie Darling/East Malling A 3022 (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Northern Spy)
Tydeman’s Late Orange (Laxton’s Superb x Cox’s Orange Pippin)
Tydeman’s October Pippin (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Ellison’s Orange)
William Crump (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Worcester Pearmain)
Winter Gem (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Grimes Golden)
Winston/Winter King (Cox’s Orange Pippin x Worcester Pearmain)

More Information Than You Need to Know About Apples…
Apple Cultivars

Dessert and Dual Purpose Apples
Adams Pearmain, Ambrosia, Antonovka, Arkansas Black, Ashmead’s Kernel, Aurora Golden Gala, Baldwin, Ben Davis, Blenheim Orange, Beauty of Bath, Belle de Boskoop, Braeburn, Brina, Cameo, Cornish Gilliflower, Cortland, Cox’s Orange Pippin, Cripps Pink (Pink Lady), Discovery, Egremont Russet, Elstar, Empire, Esopus Spitzenburg, Fuji, Gala, Ginger Gold, Golden Orange, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Gravenstein, Grimes Golden, Haralson, Honeycrisp, Idared, James Grieve, Jazz, Jersey Black, Jonagold, Jonathan, Karmijn de Sonnaville, King Byerd, Knobbed Russet, Liberty, Macoun, McIntosh, Mutsu, Newtown Pippin, Nicola, Opal, Papirovka, Paula Red, Pink Pearl, Pinova, Ralls Genet, Rambo, Red Delicious, Redlove Era, Rhode Island Greening, Ribston Pippin, Rome, Roxbury Russet, Rubens (Civni), Sekai Ichi, Spartan, Stayman, Sturmer Pippin, Summerfree, SweeTango, Taliaferro, Tompkins King, Topaz, Wealthy, York Imperial, Zestar

Cooking Apples
Bramley, Calville Blanc d’hiver, Flower of Kent, Golden Noble, Norfolk Biffin, Northern Spy

Cider Apples
Brown Snout, Dabinett, Foxwhelp, Harrison Cider Apple, Kingston Black, Redstreak, Styre

Posted in British history, food and drink, George IV, Great Britain, Living in the Regency, Regency era, Regency personalities | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on During the Reign of George IV: Apple Time with Cox’s Orange Pippin

Happenings During the Reign of William IV: The Anatomy Act 1832

Posted on October 11, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Anatomy Act 1832 (2 & 3 Will. IV c.75) was a United Kingdom Act of Parliament that gave freer license to doctors, teachers of anatomy, and bona fide medical students to dissect donated bodies. It was promulgated in reaction to public fear and revulsion of the illegal trade in corpses.

Background
Before 1832, the Murder Act 1752 stipulated that only the corpses of executed murderers could be used for dissection. By the early nineteenth century, the rise of medical science, occurring at the same time as a reduction in the number of executions, had caused demand to outstrip supply.

As early as about 1810 an anatomical society was formed, to impress on the government the necessity for an alteration in the law. Among the members were John Abernethy, Charles Bell, Everard Home, Benjamin Brodie, Astley Cooper and Henry Cline. The efforts of this body gave rise to an 1828 select committee to report on the question. Details of the evidence are recorded in the minutes of this body.

The report of this committee led to the Bill, but public revulsion and fear at the recent West Port murders sensitised opinion in favour of a change in the law. In 1831, public outcry at the activities of the London Burkers caused further pressure for a Bill.

Passage of the Bill
Public sentiment notwithstanding, there was substantial opposition to the Bill.
… they tell us it was necessary for the purposes of science. Science? Why, who is science for? Not for poor people. Then if it be necessary for the purposes of science, let them have the bodies of the rich, for whose benefit science is cultivated.
— William Cobbett

In 1829 the College of Surgeons petitioned against it, and it was withdrawn in the House of Lords owing to the opposition of the Archbishop of Canterbury William Howley.
In 1832 a new Anatomy Bill was introduced, which, though strongly opposed by Hunt, Sadler and Vyvyan, was supported by Macaulay and O’Connell, and finally passed the House of Lords on the July 19, 1832.

Provisions of the Act
The Act provided that anyone intending to practise anatomy must obtain a licence from the Home Secretary. As a matter of fact only one or two teachers in each institution took out this licence and were known as licensed teachers. They accepted the whole responsibility for the proper treatment of all bodies dissected in the building for which their licence was granted.

Regulating these licensed teachers, and receiving constant reports from them, were four inspectors of anatomy, one each for England, Scotland, Ireland and London, who reported to the Home Secretary and knew the whereabouts of every body being dissected. The principal provision of the act was Section 7 which stipulated that a person having lawful possession of a body may permit it to undergo anatomical examination provided no relative objected. The other sections were subsidiary and detailed the methods of carrying this into effect.

Section 16 repealed parts of sections 4 and 5 of the Offences against the Person Act 1828 (which in turn replaced an Act of Henry VIII, which provided that the bodies of murderers were to be hung in chains or dissected after execution. It provided instead that they were to be either hung in chains or buried within the precincts of the last prison in which the deceased had been confined. The provision for hanging in chains was shortly repealed by the Hanging in Chains Act 1834 and the whole section was repealed and replaced by section 3 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861.

The Act, provided for the needs of physicians, surgeons and students by giving them legal access to corpses that were unclaimed after death, in particular those who died in prison or the workhouse. Further, a person could donate their next of kin’s corpse in exchange for burial at the expense of the donee.

Occasionally a person, following the example of Jeremy Bentham, left their body for the advancement of science, but even then, if his relatives objected, it was not received.
The act was effective in ending the practice of resurrectionists who robbed graves as a means of obtaining cadavers for medical study.

Gunther von Hagens was accused of (but not charged with) breaking the Act because of performing televised autopsy in 2002.

Fear of the Act’s provision that paupers’ bodies could be sold for medical research without their consent, protest riots took place as late as a decade after its implementation. An anatomical theatre in Cambridge was vandalised late in 1833 “by an angry mob determined to put a stop to the dissection of a man; this wave of popular protest alarmed the medical profession who resolved to hide its activities from the general public, and to a greater or lesser extent it has been doing so ever since.”

Repeal
The Act was repealed by the Anatomy Act 1984 which was, in turn, repealed by Human Tissue Act 2004. Access to corpses for the use of medical science in the UK is now regulated by the Human Tissue Authority. However in Scotland this is still governed by amendments (under the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006) to the existing Anatomy Act, and Scotland will retain an Inspector of Anatomy. It is thought that the provisions of the original 1832 Anatomy Act are the basis of modern thinking on the subject.

Posted in British history, real life tales, Victorian era, William IV | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Murder Act 1751

Posted on October 10, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Murder Act 1751 (25 Geo 2 c 37) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain.

Provisions
The Murder Act included the provision “for better preventing the horrid crime of murder” “that some further terror and peculiar mark of infamy be added to the punishment,” and that “in no case whatsoever shall the body of any murderer be suffered to be buried,” by mandating either public dissection or “hanging in chains” of the cadaver. The act also stipulated that a person found guilty of murder should be executed two days after being sentenced unless the third day was a Sunday, in which case the execution would take place on the following Monday.

In 1828 this Act was repealed, as to England, by section 1 of the 9 Geo 4 c 31, except so far as it related to rescues and attempts to rescue. The corresponding marginal note to that section says that effect of this was to repeal the whole Act, except for sections 9 and 10.

Section 1
This section was repealed by section 1 of, and the Schedule to, the Statute Law Revision Act 1871.

Section 9
This section provided that any person who, by force, set at liberty or rescued, or who attempted to set at liberty or rescue, any person out of prison who was committed for, or convicted of, murder, or who rescued or attempted to rescue, any person convicted of murder, going to execution or during execution, was guilty of felony, and was to suffer death without benefit of clergy. This death penalty was reduced to transportation for life by the Punishment of Offences Act (1837).

Section 11
This section was repealed by section 1 of, and the Schedule to, the Statute Law Revision Act 1871.

Posted in British history, Georgian Era, real life tales | Tagged | 2 Comments