Regency Era Celebrity: Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, England’s Longest-Serving Prime Minister

Posted on July 24, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

372px-Lord_Liverpool Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (7 June 1770 – 4 December 1828) was a British politician and the longest-serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1812–27) since the Union with Ireland in 1801. He was 42 years old when he became Prime Minister in 1812, which made him younger than all of his successors. As Prime Minister, Liverpool became known for repressive measures introduced to maintain order; but he also steered the country through the period of radicalism and unrest that followed the Napoleonic Wars.

Important events during his tenure as Prime Minister included the War of 1812, the Sixth and Seventh Coalitions against the French Empire, the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars at the Congress of Vienna, the Corn Laws, the Peterloo Massacre, the Trinitarian Act 1812 and the emerging issue of Catholic Emancipation.

Early Life
Jenkinson was baptised on 29 June 1770 at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, the son of George III’s close adviser Charles Jenkinson, later the first Earl of Liverpool, and his first wife, Amelia Watts. Jenkinson’s 19 year old mother, who was the part-Indian daughter of a senior East India Company official William Watts, died from the effects of childbirth one month after his birth.

Arms of the Earls of Liverpool
Jenkinson was educated at Charterhouse School and Christ Church, Oxford. In the summer of 1789, Jenkinson spent four months in Paris to perfect his French and enlarge his social experience. He returned to Oxford for three months to complete his terms of residence and in May 1790 was created master of arts.

He won election to the House of Commons in 1790 for Rye, a seat he would hold until 1803; at the time, however, he was under the age of assent to Parliament, so he refrained from taking his seat and spent the following winter and early spring in an extended tour of the Continent. This tour took in the Netherlands and Italy; afterwards, he was old enough to take his seat in Parliament. It is not clear exactly when he entered the Commons, but as his twenty-first birthday was not reached until almost the end of the 1791 session, it is possible he waited until the following year.

With the help of his father’s influence and his political talent, he rose relatively fast in the Tory government. In February 1792, he gave the reply to Samuel Whitbread’s critical motion on the government’s Russian policy. He delivered several other speeches during the session, including one against the abolition of the slave trade, which reflected his father’s strong opposition to William Wilberforce’s campaign. He served as a member of the Board of Control for India from 1793 to 1796.

In the defence movement that followed the outbreak of hostilities with France, Jenkinson, was one of the first of the ministers of the government to enlist in the militia. In 1794 he became a Colonel in the Cinque Ports Fencibles, and his military duties led to frequent absences from the Commons. In 1796 his regiment was sent to Scotland, and he was quartered for a time in Dumfries.

His parliamentary attendance also suffered from his reaction when his father angrily opposed his projected marriage with Lady Louisa Hervey, daughter of the Earl of Bristol. After Pitt and the King had intervened on his behalf, the wedding finally took place at Wimbledon on 25 March 1795. In May 1796, when his father was created Earl of Liverpool, he took the courtesy title of Lord Hawkesbury and remained in the Commons. He became Baron Hawkesbury in his own right and was elevated to the House of Lords in November 1803, as recognition of his work as Foreign Secretary. He also served as Master of the Mint (1799–1801).

Cabinet
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Home Secretary [edit]
In Henry Addington’s government, he entered the cabinet as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in which capacity he negotiated the Treaty of Amiens with France.[4] Most of his time as Foreign secretary was spent dealing with the nations of France and the United States. He continued to serve in the cabinet as Home Secretary in Pitt the Younger’s second government. While Pitt was seriously ill, Liverpool was in charge of the cabinet and drew up the King’s Speech for the official opening of Parliament. When William Pitt died in 1806, the King asked Liverpool to accept the post of Prime Minister, but he refused, as he believed he lacked a governing majority. He was then made leader of the Opposition during Lord Grenville’s ministry (the only time that Liverpool did not hold government office between 1793 and after his retirement). In 1807, he resumed office as Home Secretary in the Duke of Portland’s ministry.

Secretary of State for War and the Colonies
Lord Liverpool (as Hawkesbury had now become by the death of his father in December 1808) accepted the position of Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in Spencer Perceval’s government in 1809. Liverpool’s first step on taking up his new post was to elicit from the Duke of Wellington a strong enough statement of his ability to resist a French attack to persuade the cabinet to commit themselves to the maintenance of his small force in Portugal.

Prime Minister
When Perceval was assassinated in May 1812, Lord Liverpool succeeded him as Prime Minister. The cabinet proposed Liverpool as his successor with Lord Castlereagh as leader in the Commons. But after an adverse vote in the Lower House, they subsequently gave both their resignations. The Prince Regent, however, found it impossible to form a different coalition and confirmed Liverpool as prime minister on 8 June. Liverpool’s government contained some of the future great leaders of Britain, such as Lord Castlereagh, George Canning, the Duke of Wellington, Robert Peel, and William Huskisson. Liverpool is considered a skilled politician, and held together the liberal and reactionary wings of the Tory party, which his successors, Canning, Goderich and Wellington, had great difficulty with.

Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna
Liverpool’s ministry was a long and eventful one. The War of 1812 with the United States and the final campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars were fought during Liverpool’s premiership. It was during his ministry that the Peninsular Campaigns were fought by the Duke of Wellington. Britain defeated France in the Napoleonic Wars, and Liverpool was awarded the Order of the Garter. At the peace negotiations that followed, Liverpool’s main concern was to obtain a European settlement that would ensure the independence of the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, and confine France inside her pre-war frontiers without damaging her national integrity. To achieve this, he was ready to return all British colonial conquests. Within this broad framework, he gave Castlereagh a discretion at the Congress of Vienna, the next most important event of his ministry. At the congress, he gave prompt approval for Castlereagh’s bold initiative in making the defensive alliance with Austria and France in January 1815. In the aftermath, many years of peace followed.

The Corn Laws and Trouble at Home
Agriculture remained a problem because good harvests between 1819 and 1822 had brought down prices and evoked a cry for greater protection. When the powerful agricultural lobby in Parliament demanded protection in the aftermath, Liverpool gave in to political necessity. Under governmental supervision the notorious Corn Laws of 1815 were passed prohibiting the import of foreign wheat until the domestic price reached a minimum accepted level. Liverpool, however, was in principle a free-trader, but had to accept the bill as a temporary measure to ease the transition to peacetime conditions. His chief economic problem during his time as Prime Minister was that of the nation’s finances. The interest on the national debt, massively swollen by the enormous expenditure of the final war years, together with the war pensions, absorbed the greater part of normal government revenue. The refusal of the House of Commons in 1816 to continue the wartime income tax left ministers with no immediate alternative but to go on with the ruinous system of borrowing to meet necessary annual expenditure. Liverpool eventually facilitated a return to the gold standard in 1819.

Inevitably taxes rose to compensate for borrowing and to pay off the debt, which led to widespread disturbance between 1812 and 1822. Around this time, the group known as Luddites began industrial action, by smashing industrial machines developed for use in the textile industries of the West Riding of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire. Throughout the period 1811–16, there were a series of incidents of machine-breaking and many of those convicted faced execution.

The reports of the secret committees he obtained in 1817 pointed to the existence of an organised network of disaffected political societies, especially in the manufacturing areas. Liverpool told Peel that the disaffection in the country seemed even worse than in 1794. Because of a largely perceived threat to the government, temporary legislation was introduced. He suspended Habeas Corpus in both Great Britain (1817) and Ireland (1822). Following the Peterloo Massacre in 1819, his government imposed the repressive Six Acts legislation which limited, among other things, free speech and the right to gather for peaceful demonstration. In 1820, as a result of these measures, Liverpool and other cabinet ministers were almost assassinated in the Cato Street Conspiracy.

Although Lord Liverpool argued for the abolition of the slave trade at the Congress of Vienna, he was generally opposed to reform at home, often embracing repressive measures to ensure the status quo. He did however support the repeal of the Combination Laws banning workers from combining into trade unions in 1824, although the powers of these unions were restricted in 1825 following strikes.

Catholic Emancipation
During the 19th century, and, in particular, during Liverpool’s time in office, Catholic emancipation was a source of great conflict. In 1805, in his first important statement of his views on the subject, Liverpool had argued that the special relationship of the monarch with the Church of England, and the refusal of Roman Catholics to take the oath of supremacy, justified their exclusion from political power. Throughout his career, he remained opposed to the idea of Catholic emancipation, though did see marginal concessions as important to the stability of the nation.

The decision of 1812 to remove the issue from collective cabinet policy, followed in 1813 by the defeat of Grattan’s Roman Catholic Relief Bill, brought a period of calm. Liverpool supported marginal concessions such as the admittance of English Roman Catholics to the higher ranks of the armed forces, the magistracy, and the parliamentary franchise; but he remained opposed to their participation in parliament itself. In the 1820s, pressure from the liberal wing of the Commons and the rise of the Catholic Association in Ireland revived the controversy.

By the date of Sir Francis Burdett’s Catholic Relief Bill in 1825, emancipation looked a likely success. Indeed, the success of the bill in the Commons in April, followed by Robert Peel’s tender of resignation, finally persuaded Liverpool that he should retire. When Canning made a formal proposal that the cabinet should back the bill, Liverpool was convinced that his administration had come to its end. George Canning then succeeded him as Prime Minister. Catholic emancipation however was not fully implemented until the major changes of the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 under the leadership of the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel, and with the work of the Catholic Association established in 1823.

Final Years
Liverpool’s first wife, Louisa, died at 54. He soon married again to Lady Mary Chester, a long-time friend of Louisa. Their marriage only lasted three years however, until Liverpool’s death. Liverpool finally retired on 9 April 1827, when, at Fife House (his riverside residence in Whitehall since 1810), he suffered a severe cerebral haemorrhage, and asked the King to seek a successor. There was another minor stroke in July, after which he lingered on at Coombe until a third and fatal attack on 4 December 1828 when he died. He had no children and was succeeded in the Earldom of Liverpool by his younger half-brother Charles Cecil Cope Jenkinson, 3rd Earl of Liverpool. He was buried in Hawkesbury parish church, Gloucestershire, beside his father and his first wife. His personal estate was registered at under £120,000.

Liverpool Street in London is named after Lord Liverpool.

Lord Liverpool’s Administration (1812–1827)
Lord Liverpool – First Lord of the Treasury and Leader of the House of Lords
Lord Eldon – Lord Chancellor
Lord Harrowby – Lord President of the Council
Lord Westmorland – Lord Privy Seal
Lord Sidmouth – Secretary of State for the Home Department
Lord Castlereagh (Lord Londonderry after 1821) – Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Leader of the House of Commons
Lord Bathurst – Secretary of State for War and the Colonies
Lord Melville – First Lord of the Admiralty
Nicholas Vansittart – Chancellor of the Exchequer
Lord Mulgrave – Master-General of the Ordnance
Lord Buckinghamshire – President of the Board of Control
Charles Bathurst – Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
Lord Camden – minister without portfolio

Posted in British history, Georgian Era, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities, Victorian era | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Regency Era Celebrity: Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, England’s Longest-Serving Prime Minister

The Brown Bess: The Standard of Weaponry in the Napoleonic Wars

Posted on July 23, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

As I said yesterday, my research for my Work in Progress (Book 6 of the Realm Series, A Touch of Love) has led me to explore weaponry during and after the Napoleonic Wars. Below, one find information on the British standard, the Brown Bess.

800px-Brown_Bess Brown Bess is a nickname of uncertain origin for the British Army’s muzzle-loading smoothbore Land Pattern Musket and its derivatives. This musket was used in the era of the expansion of the British Empire and acquired symbolic importance, at least, as significant as its physical importance. It was in use for over a hundred years with many incremental changes in its design. These versions include the Long Land Pattern, Short Land Pattern, India Pattern, New Land Pattern Musket, Sea Service Musket and others.

The Long Land Pattern musket and its derivatives, all .75 caliber flintlock muskets, were the standard long guns of the British Empire’s land forces from 1722 until 1838 when they were superseded by a percussion cap smoothbore musket. The British Ordnance System converted many flintlocks into the new percussion system known as the Pattern 1839 Musket.

A fire in 1841 at the Tower of London destroyed many muskets before they could be converted. Still, the Brown Bess saw service until the middle of the nineteenth century. Some were used by Maori warriors during the Musket Wars 1820s-1830s, having purchased them from European traders at the time, some were still in service during the Indian rebellion of 1857, and also by Zulu warriors, who had purchased them from European traders during the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879, and some were sold to the Mexican Army who used them during the Texas Revolution of 1836 and the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848. One was even used in the Battle of Shiloh in 1862.

Most male citizens of the American Colonies were required by law to own arms and ammunition for militia duty. The Long Land Pattern was a common firearm in use by both sides in the American Revolutionary War.

Origins of the Name
One hypothesis is that the “Brown Bess” was named after Elizabeth I of England, but this lacks support. It is not believed this name was used contemporaneously with the early Long Pattern Land musket, but that the name arose in late years of the 18th century when the Short Pattern and India Pattern were in wide use.

Early uses of the term include the newspaper, the Connecticut Courant in April 1771, which said “… but if you are afraid of the sea, take Brown Bess on your shoulder and march.” This passage indicates widespread use of the term by that time. The 1785 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, a contemporary work which defined vernacular and slang terms, contained this entry: “Brown Bess: A soldier’s firelock. To hug Brown Bess; to carry a fire-lock, or serve as a private soldier.” Military and government records of the time do not use this poetical name but refer to firelocks, flintlock, muskets or by the weapon’s model designations.

Soldiers of the Black Watch armed with a musket (Brown Bess) and a halberd, c. 1790.

Soldiers of the Black Watch armed with a musket (Brown Bess) and a halberd, c. 1790.

Popular explanations of the use of the word “Brown” include that it was a reference to either the colour of the walnut stocks, or to the characteristic brown colour that was produced by russeting, an early form of metal treatment. Others argue that mass-produced weapons of the time were coated in brown varnish on metal parts as a rust preventative and on wood as a sealer (or in the case of unscrupulous contractors, to disguise inferior or non-regulation types of wood). However, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) notes that “browning” was only introduced in the early 19th century, well after the term had come into general use.

Similarly, the word “Bess” is commonly held to either derive from the word arquebus or blunderbuss (predecessors of the musket) or to be a reference to Elizabeth I, possibly given to commemorate her death. More plausible is that the term Brown Bess derived from the German words “brawn buss” or “braun buss,” meaning “strong gun” or “brown gun”; King George I who commissioned its use was from Germany. The OED has citations for “brown musket” dating back to the early 18th century, which refer to the same weapon. Another suggestion is that the name is simply the counterpart to the earlier Brown Bill.

In the days of lace-ruffles, perukes, and brocade
Brown Bess was a partner whom none could despise –
An out-spoken, flinty-lipped, brazen-faced jade,
With a habit of looking men straight in the eyes –
At Blenheim and Ramillies, fops would confess
They were pierced to the heart by the charms of Brown Bess.
—Rudyard Kipling, “Brown Bess,” 1911

The Land Pattern Muskets
From the 17th to the early years of the 18th century, most nations did not specify standards for military firearms. Firearms were individually procured by officers or regiments as late as the 1740s, and were often custom-made to the tastes of the purchaser. As the firearm gained ascendancy on the battlefield, this lack of standardisation led to increasing difficulties in the supply of ammunition and repair materials. To address these difficulties, armies began to adopt standardised “patterns.” A military service selected a “pattern musket” to be stored in a “pattern room”, There it served as a reference for arms makers, who could make comparisons and take measurements to ensure that their products matched the standard.

Stress-bearing parts of the Brown Bess, such as the barrel, lockwork, and sling-swivels, were customarily made of iron, while other furniture pieces such as the butt plate, trigger guard and ramrod pipe were found in both iron and brass. It weighed around 10 pounds (4.5 kg) and it could be fitted with a 17 inches (430 mm) triangular cross-section bayonet. The weapon did not have sights, though it could be aimed using the bayonet lug as a crude sight.

The earliest models had iron fittings but these were replaced by brass in models built after 1736. Wooden ramrods were used with the first guns but were replaced by iron ones, although guns with wooden ramrods were still issued to troops on American service until 1765 and later to loyalist units in the American Revolution. Wooden ramrods were also used in the Dragoon version produced from 1744 to 1771 and for Navy and Marine use.
Accuracy of the Brown Bess was fair, as with most other muskets. The effective range is often quoted as 175 yards (160 m), but the Brown Bess was often fired en masse at 50 yards (46 m) to inflict the greatest damage upon the enemy. Military tactics of the period stressed mass volleys and massed bayonet charges, instead of individual marksmanship. The large soft projectile could inflict a great deal of damage when it hit and the great length of the weapon allowed longer reach in bayonet engagements.

As with all similar smooth bore muskets, it was possible to improve the accuracy of the weapon by using musket balls that fit more tightly into the barrel. The black powder used at the time would quickly foul the barrel, making it more and more difficult to reload a tighter-fitting round after each shot and increasing the risk of the round jamming in the barrel during loading. Since tactics at the time favored close range battles and speed over accuracy, smaller and more loosely fitting musket balls were much more commonly used. The Brown Bess had a barrel bore of .75 caliber, and the typical round used was around .69 caliber. Modern re-enactors and musket enthusiasts often use .715 or even .735 caliber balls for increased accuracy. Modern powders which reduce fouling and cleaning patches run down the barrel between shots are used to avoid problems caused by barrel fouling.
While the looser-fitting musket ball reduced the effective range of a single musketeer firing at a single man-sized target to around 50 yards (46 m) to 75 yards (69 m), the Brown Bess was rarely used in single combat. Since individual soldiers are not aimed at in mass volleys, the effective range of the Brown Bess when fired en masse was easily 100 yards (91 m) or more. The black powder used at the time created a lot of smoke which quickly obscured the battlefield, making battles at these longer ranges impractical due to limited visibility.

Field Tests
Field tests of smoothbore muskets in the late 18th and early 19th centuries reported widely reliable expectations of accuracy and speed of fire. The rate of fire ranged from one shot every fifteen to twenty seconds (3-4 shots per minute) with highly trained troops, to two shots per minute (one shot every 30 seconds) for inexperienced recruits.

The standard military loading procedure from prepared paper cartridges containing ball and gunpowder in an elongated envelope is:
1. Tear cartridge with teeth and prime the pan directly from the cartridge;
2. Stand the musket and pour the bulk of the powder down the barrel;
3. Reverse the cartridge and use the ramrod to seat the ball and paper envelope onto the powder charge.

Standard European targets included strips of cloth 50 yards long to represent an opposing line of infantry, with the target height being six feet for infantry and eight feet, three inches for cavalry. Estimations of hit probability at 175 yards could be as high as 75% in volley fire. This however was without allowances for the gaps between the soldiers in an opposing line, for overly tall targets or the confusing and distracting realities of the battlefield. Modern testers shooting from rigid rests, using optimum loads and fast priming powder, report groups of circa five inches at 50 yards (Cumpston 2008).

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The Baker Rifle: Britain’s First Long-Distance Weapon

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

I am in the midst of research for my next book in the Realm series. A Touch of Love will be released in late October 2013. Part of that research included discovering more about weaponry AFTER the Napoleonic Wars. So, below is what I have found on the “Baker Rifle.”

Baker Rifle with 24-inch bayonet

Baker Rifle with 24-inch bayonet

The Baker rifle (officially known as the Infantry Rifle) was a flintlock rifle used by the Rifle regiments of the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. It was the first standard-issue, British-made rifle accepted by the British armed forces. The Baker Rifle was first produced in 1800 by Ezekiel Baker, a master gunsmith from Whitechapel. The British Army was still issuing the Infantry Rifle in the 1830s.

History and Design
The British army had learned the value of rifles from their experience in the American rebellion. However, existing rifle designs were considered too cumbersome, slow-firing, fragile or expensive to be put to use on any scale beyond irregular companies. Rifles had been issued on a limited basis and consisted of parts made to no precise pattern, often brought in from Prussia. The war against Revolutionary France resulted in the employment of new tactics, and the British Army responded, albeit with some delay. Prior to the formation of an Experimental Rifle Corps in 1800, a trial was held at Woolwich by the British Board of Ordnance on 22 February 1800 in order to select a standard rifle pattern; the rifle designed by Ezekiel Baker was chosen.

Colonel Coote Manningham, responsible for establishing the Rifle Corps, influenced the initial designs of the Baker. The first model resembled the British Infantry Musket, but was rejected as too heavy. Baker was provided with a German Jäger rifle as an example of what was needed. The second model he made had a .75 calibre bore, the same calibre as the Infantry Musket. It had a 32-inch barrel, with eight rectangular rifling grooves; this model was accepted as the Infantry Rifle, but more changes were made until it was finally placed into production.

The third and final model had the barrel shortened from 32 to 30 inches, and the calibre reduced to .653, which allowed the rifle to fire a .625 calibre carbine bullet, with a greased patch to grip the now-seven rectangular grooves in the barrel. The rifle had a simple folding backsight with the standard large lock mechanism (initially marked ‘Tower’ and ‘G.R.’ under a Crown; later ones after the battle of Waterloo had ‘Enfield’), with a swan-neck cock as fitted to the ‘Brown Bess.’ Like the German Jäger rifles, it had a scrolled brass trigger guard to help ensure a firm grip and a raised cheek-piece on the left-hand side of the butt. Like many rifles, it had a ‘butt-trap’ or patchbox where greased linen patches and tools could be stored. The lid of the patchbox was brass, and hinged at the rear so it could be flipped up. The stocks were made of walnut and held the barrel with three flat captive wedges. The rifle also had a metal locking bar to accommodate a 24-inch sword bayonet, similar to that of the Jäger rifle. The Baker was 45 inches from muzzle to butt, 12 inches shorter than the Infantry Musket, and weighed almost nine pounds. As gunpowder fouling built up in the grooves the weapon became much slower to load and less accurate, so a cleaning kit was stored in the patch box of the Baker; the Infantry Muskets were not issued with cleaning kits.

Several Variations of the Baker Rifle Design
After the Baker entered service, more modifications were made to the rifle and several different variations were produced. A lighter and shorter carbine version for the cavalry was introduced, and a number of volunteer associations procured their own models, including the Duke of Cumberland’s Corps of Sharpshooters, which ordered models with a 33-inch barrel, in August 1803.

A second pattern of Baker Rifle was fitted with a ‘Newland’ lock that had a flat-faced ring neck cock. In 1806, a third pattern was produced that included a ‘pistol grip’ style trigger guard and a smaller patchbox with a plain rounded front. The lock plate was smaller, flat, and had a steeped-down tail, a raised semi-waterproof pan, a flat ring neck cock, and a sliding safety bolt. With the introduction of a new pattern Short Land Pattern Flintlock Musket (‘Brown Bess’) in 1810, with its flat lock and ring-necked cock, the Baker’s lock followed suit for what became the fourth pattern. It also featured a ‘slit stock’—the stock had a slot cut in its underpart just over a quarter-inch wide. This was done after Ezekiel Baker had seen reports of the ramrod jamming in the stock after the build-up of residue in the ramrod channel, and when the wood warped after getting wet.

The rifle is referred to almost exclusively as the “Baker Rifle,” but it was produced by a variety of manufacturers and sub-contractors from 1800 to 1837. Most of the rifles produced between 1800 and 1815 were not made by Ezekiel Baker, but under the Tower of London system, and he sub-contracted the manufacture of parts of the rifle to over 20 British gunsmiths. It was reported that many rifles sent to the British Army inspectors were not complete, to the extent of even having no barrel, since the rifle was sent on to another contractor for finishing. Ezekiel Baker’s production during the period 1805–1815 was 712 rifles, not even enough to be in the “top ten.”

The Board of Ordnance, both of its own volition and at the behest of Infantry Staff Officers, ordered production modifications during the rifle’s service life. Variations included a carbine with a safety catch and swivel-mounted ramrod, the 1801 pattern West India Rifle (a simplified version lacking a patchbox), the 1809 pattern, which was .75 (musket) calibre, and the 1800/15, which was modified from existing stocks to use a socket bayonet. The most common field modification was the bent stock: riflemen in the field found that the stock was not bent sufficiently at the wrist to allow accurate firing, so stocks were bent by steaming. As this technique produces temporary results (lasting approximately five years), no examples found today exhibit this bend.

Use
During the Napoleonic Wars, the Baker was reported to be effective at long range due to its accuracy and dependability under battlefield conditions. In spite of its advantages, the rifle did not replace the standard British musket of the day, the Brown Bess, but was issued officially only to rifle regiments. In practice, however, many regiments, such as the 23rd Regiment of Foot (Royal Welch Fusiliers), and others, acquired rifles for use by some in their light companies during the time of the Peninsular War.

These units were employed as an addition to the common practice of fielding skirmishers in advance of the main column, who were used to weaken and disrupt the waiting enemy lines (the British also had a light company in each battalion that was trained and employed as skirmishers, but these were only issued with muskets). With the advantage of the greater range and accuracy provided by the Baker rifle, the highly trained British skirmishers were able to defeat their French counterparts routinely and in turn disrupt the main French force by sniping at officers and NCOs.

The rifle was used by what were considered elite units, such as the 5th battalion and rifle companies of the 6th and 7th Battalions of the 60th Regiment of Foot, deployed around the world, and the three battalions of the 95th Regiment of Foot that served under the Duke of Wellington between 1808 and 1814 in the Peninsular War, the War of 1812 (3rd Batt./95th (Rifles), at Battle of New Orleans), and again in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. The two light infantry Battalions of the King’s German Legion, as well as sharpshooter platoons within the Light Companies of the KGL Line Bns, also used the Baker. The rifle was supplied to or privately purchased by numerous volunteer and militia units; these examples often differ from the regular issue pattern. Some variants were used by cavalry, including the 10th Hussars. The Baker was also used in Canada in the War of 1812. It is recorded that the British Army still issued Baker rifles in 1841, three years after its production had ceased.
The rifle was used in several countries during the first half of the 19th century; indeed, Mexican forces at the Battle of the Alamo are known to have been carrying Baker rifles, as well as Brown Bess muskets. They were also supplied to the government of Nepal; some of these rifles were released from the stores of the Royal Nepalese Army in 2004, but many had deteriorated beyond recovery.

Performance
Rate of Fire
The Baker rifle could not usually be reloaded as fast as a musket, as the slightly undersized lead balls had to be wrapped in patches of greased leather or linen so that they would more closely fit the lands of the rifling. A rifleman was expected to be able to fire two aimed shots a minute, compared to the four shots a minute of the Brown Bess musket in the hands of a trained infantryman. However, the average time to reload a rifle is dependent on the level of training and experience of the user; twenty seconds (or three shots a minute) is possible for a highly proficient rifleman. Using a hand-measured powder charge for accurate long range shots could increase the load time to as much as a minute.

In the course of the Napoleonic Wars, riflemen used paper patches and even bare rifle balls when shooting in a hurry in battle, with faster loading at the cost of accuracy.
Accuracy was of more importance than rate of fire when skirmishing. The rifleman’s main battlefield role was to utilise cover and skirmish (frequently against enemy skirmishers), whereas his musket-armed counterparts in the line infantry fired in volley or mass-fire. This could further reduce the firing rate of the rifle compared to musket during battle.

Accuracy and Range
The rifle as originally manufactured was expected to be capable of firing at a range of up to 200 yards (183 meters) with a high hit rate. The musket was fairly accurate at medium distances, with a one in three chance of hitting a man-sized target at 100 yards (91 meters), but this accuracy diminished hugely at longer ranges. To increase the odds of a hit, massed ranks of 60–80 muskets were usually fired in a volley, which increased the chances of some musket balls hitting the intended targets. The Baker rifle was used by skirmishers facing their opponents in pairs, sniping at the enemy either from positions in front of the main lines, or from hidden positions in heights overlooking battlefields.
The accuracy of the rifle in capable hands is most famously demonstrated by the action of Rifleman Thomas Plunkett (or Plunket) of the 1st Battalion, 95th Rifles, who shot French General Colbert at an unknown but long range (as much as 600 yards (549 meters) according to some sources) during the retreat to La Coruña during the Peninsular War. He then shot one of the General’s aides, suggesting that the success of the first shot was not due to luck.

That rifleman Plunkett and others were able to regularly hit targets at ranges considered to be beyond the rifle’s effective range speaks for both their marksmanship and the capabilities of the rifle.

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The BreakUp of Barnes & Noble

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

This post comes from Bloomberg Businessweek:

Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS:US) moved closer to breaking up the largest U.S. bookstore chain after its chief executive officer resigned and it named a manager with a history of spinning off units to its most senior position.

William Lynch stepped down yesterday, effective immediately, and Barnes & Noble promoted Chief Financial Officer Michael Huseby, 57, to be president of the company and CEO of Nook Media. It isn’t looking for a new CEO and Huseby will report to Leonard Riggio, the chain’s chairman, founder and largest shareholder, the New York-based company said.

Barnes & Noble is considering splitting up its businesses after Riggio said in February that he planned to make an offer for its 680 stores and website. The company also created a digital-media division last year with the possible goal of spinning it off.

To read the complete article, please visit:
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-07-08/barnes-and-noble-ceo-lynch-resigns-after-sales-declines-and-losses

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The Waterloo Bridge in London, Spanning Nearly 200 Years of History

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

View of the old Waterloo Bridge from Whitehall stairs, John Constable, 18 June 1817

View of the old Waterloo Bridge from Whitehall stairs, John Constable, 18 June 1817

Crowds attend the opening of Waterloo Bridge on 18th June 1817

Crowds attend the opening of Waterloo Bridge on 18th June 1817

Waterloo Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge crossing the River Thames in London, England, between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. The name of the bridge is in memory of the Anglo-Dutch and Prussian victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Thanks to its location at a strategic bend in the river, the views of London (Westminster, the South Bank and London Eye to the west, the City of London and Canary Wharf to the east) from the bridge are widely held to be the finest from any spot at ground level.

History
First Bridge
The first bridge on the site was designed in 1809-10 by John Rennie for the Strand Bridge Company and opened in 1817 as a toll bridge. The granite bridge had nine arches, each of 120 feet (36.6 m) span, separated by double Grecian-Doric stone columns and was 2,456 feet (748.6 m) long, including approaches. Before its opening it was known as ‘Strand Bridge.’ During the 1840s the bridge gained a reputation as a popular place for suicide attempts. In 1841, the American daredevil Samuel Gilbert Scott was killed while performing an act in which he hung by a rope from a scaffold on the bridge. In 1844 Thomas Hood wrote the poem The Bridge of Sighs about the suicide of a prostitute there. Paintings of the bridge were created by the French Impressionist Claude Monet and the English Romantic, John Constable. The bridge was nationalised in 1878 and given to the Metropolitan Board of Works, who removed the toll from it.
Michael Faraday tried in 1832 to measure the potential difference between each side of the bridge caused by the ebbing salt water flowing through the Earth’s magnetic field.

View of the old Waterloo Bridge from Whitehall stairs, John Constable, 18 June 1817

View of the old Waterloo Bridge from Whitehall stairs, John Constable, 18 June 1817

From 1884, serious problems were found in Rennie’s bridge piers, after scour from the increased river flow after Old London Bridge was demolished damaged their foundations. By the 1920s the problems had increased, with settlement at pier five necessitating closure of the whole bridge while some heavy superstructure was removed and temporary reinforcements put in place.

Second Bridge
London County Council decided to demolish the bridge and replace it with a new structure designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. The engineers were Ernest Buckton and John Cuerel of Rendel Palmer & Tritton. However Scott, by his own admission, was no engineer and his design, with reinforced concrete beams under the footways, leaving the road to be supported by transverse slabs, was difficult to implement. The pairs of spans on each side of the river were supported by beams continuous over their piers, and these were cantilevered out at their ends to support the centre span and the short approach slabs at the banks. The beams were shaped “to look as much like arches as…beams can.” They were clad in Portland stone from the South West of England; the stone cleans itself whenever it rains. To guard against the possibility of further subsidence from scour, each pier was given a number of jacks which can be used to level the structure.

The new crossing was partially opened on Tuesday 11 March 1942 and completed in 1945. The new bridge was the only Thames bridge to have been damaged by German bombers during World War II. The building contractor was Peter Lind & Company Limited. It is frequently asserted that the work force was largely female, and it is sometimes referred to as “the ladies’ bridge.”

Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was assassinated on Waterloo Bridge by agents of the Bulgarian secret police assisted by the KGB.

Reuse of the Original Stones
Granite stones from the original bridge were subsequently “presented to various parts of the British world to further historic links in the British Commonwealth of Nations.” Two of these stones are in Canberra, the capital city of Australia, sited between the parallel spans of the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge, one of two major crossings of Lake Burley Griffin in the heart of the city. Stones from the bridge were used to build a monument in Wellington, New Zealand, to Paddy the Wanderer, a dog that roamed the wharves from 1928 to 1939 and was befriended by seamen, watersiders, Harbour Board workers and taxi drivers. The monument includes a bronze likeness of Paddy and drinking bowls for dogs.

Geography
The south end of the bridge is the area known as The South Bank and includes the Royal Festival Hall, Waterloo station, Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Royal National Theatre, and the National Film Theatre (directly beneath the bridge).

In the 1950s the National Film Theatre (a legacy from the Festival of Britain) was built directly underneath Waterloo Bridge. In the 1980s the award winning Museum of the Moving Image was also built directly underneath the bridge and became perhaps the only museum in the world to have stalactites (from water leaking through the Bridge) growing within it.

The north end passes above the Victoria Embankment where the road joins the Strand and Aldwych alongside Somerset House. This end previously housed the southern portal of the Kingsway Tramway Subway until the late 1950s. The entire bridge was given Grade II* listed structure protection in 1981.

The nearest London Underground station is Waterloo. London Waterloo is also a National Rail station.

Cultural Associations
Robert E. Sherwood’s 1930 play, Waterloo Bridge, about a soldier who falls in love and marries a woman he meets on the bridge during an air raid in World War I, was made into films released in 1931, 1940 and 1956. The 1940 film starred Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor.

After the Lunch, a poem by Wendy Cope about two lovers parting on Waterloo Bridge, now forms the lyric of the song Waterloo Bridge by Jools Holland and Louise Marshall.

A scene in the BBC series Sherlock episode The Great Game takes place beneath the bridge’s northern side, where members of Sherlock’s homeless network congregate.

Waterloo Bridge features in the 2013 short film ‘On The Bridge’ starring Dean Lennox Kelly and Christopher Tester, based on a true story about a man who meets a soldier on Waterloo Bridge one night who wants to jump into the River Thames.

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London’s Pleasure Gardens, Vauxhall Gardens

Posted on July 18, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Vauxhall Gardens, 1751 perspective

Vauxhall Gardens, 1751 perspective

Vauxhall Gardens (English pronunciation: /ˈvɒksɔːl/) was a pleasure garden, one of the leading venues for public entertainment in London, England, from the mid 17th Century to the mid 19th Century. Originally known as New Spring Gardens, the site was believed to have opened before the Restoration of 1660 with the first mention being made by Samuel Pepys in 1662. The Gardens consisted of several acres of trees and shrubs with attractive walks. Initially, entrance was free with food and drink being sold to support the venture.

The site became Vauxhall Gardens in 1785, and admission was charged to gain its many attractions. The Gardens drew all manner of men and supported enormous crowds, with its paths being noted for romantic assignations. Tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents, concerts and fireworks provided amusement. The rococo “Turkish tent” became one of the Gardens’ structures; the interior of the Rotunda became one of Vauxhall’s most viewed attractions, and the chinoiserie style was a feature of several buildings. A statue depicting George Frederic Handel, which later found its way to Westminster Abbey, was erected in the Gardens. In 1817, the Battle of Waterloo was re-enacted with 1,000 soldiers participating.

Vauxhall was closed in 1840 after its owners suffered bankruptcy, but re-opened in 1841. It changed hands in 1842, and was permanently closed in 1859. Vauxhall Gardens was located in Kennington on the south bank of the River Thames, which was not part of the built-up area of the metropolis until towards the end of the Gardens’ existence. Part of the site is now a small public park called Spring Gardens.

Cultural Significance
Eminent 18th century scholar John Barrell, writing in Times Literary Supplement, brings out Vauxhall’s significance. “Vauxhall pleasure gardens, on the south bank of the Thames, entertained Londoners and visitors to London for 200 years. From 1729, under the management of Jonathan Tyers, property developer, impresario, patron of the arts, the gardens grew into an extraordinary business, a cradle of modern painting and architecture, and… music…. A pioneer of mass entertainment, Tyers had to become also a pioneer of mass catering, of outdoor lighting, of advertising, and of all the logistics involved in running one of the most complex and profitable business ventures of the eighteenth century in Britain.” References to Vauxhall are, for 150 years, as ubiquitous as references to “Broadway” later would be.

History
The Gardens are believed to have opened just before the Restoration of 1660, on property formerly owned by Jane Fauxe, or Vaux, widow, in 1615. Whereas John Nichols in his History of Lambeth Parish conjectures that she was the widow of Guy Fawkes, executed in 1606, John Timbs in his 1867 Curiosities of London states for a fact that there was no such connection, and that the Vaux name derives from one Falkes de Breauté, a mercenary working for King John who acquired the land by marriage. Jane is stated to be the widow of John, a vintner. Perhaps the earliest record is Samuel Pepys’ description of a visit he made to the New Spring Gardens on the 29th May 1662. The then name distinguished the gardens from the Old Spring Gardens at Charing Cross; however Pepys implies that there were both Old and New Spring Gardens at Vauxhall; and indeed Spring Gardens appears to have been a longstanding appellation for a variety of entertainment enterprises.

The Gardens consisted of several acres laid out with walks. Initially admission was free, the proprietors making money by selling food and drink. John Evelyn described “the New Spring Garden at Lambeth” as a “very pretty contrived plantation” in 1661. John Aubrey, in his Antiquities of Surrey gives us the following account:

At Vauxhall, Sir Samuel Morland built a fine room, anno 1667, the inside all of looking-glass, and fountains very pleasant to behold, which is much visited by strangers: it stands in the middle of the garden, covered with Cornish slate, on the point of which he placed a punchinello, very well carved, which held a dial, but the winds have demolished it.

A plan of 1681 shows the circular central feature planted with trees and shrubs, and the formal allées that were to remain a feature as long as the Gardens lasted.

Sir John Hawkins, in his General History of Music (1776), says:

The house seems to have been rebuilt since the time that Sir Samuel Morland dwelt in it. About the year 1730, Mr. Jonathan Tyers became the occupier of it, and, there being a large garden belonging to it, planted with a great number of stately trees, and laid out in shady walks, it obtained the name of Spring Gardens; and the house being converted into a tavern, or place of entertainment, was much frequented by the votaries of pleasure. Mr. Tyers opened it with an advertisement of a Ridotto al Fresco, a term which the people of this country had till that time been strangers to. These entertainments were repeated in the course of the summer, and numbers resorted to partake of them. This encouraged the proprietor to make his garden a place of musical entertainment, for every evening during the summer season. To this end he was at great expense in decorating the gardens with paintings; he engaged a band of excellent musicians; he issued silver tickets at one guinea each for admission, and receiving great encouragement, he set up an organ in the orchestra, and, in a conspicuous part of the garden, erected a fine statue of Mr. Handel.

The ‘supposed’ last night of the gardens was on 5 September 1839 when it attracted 1089 people. Vauxhall was sold at auction on 9 Sept 1841 for £20,000, following bankruptcy of the owners, after which it re-opened, but it was permanently closed in 1859, and most of the land sold for building purposes.

The Spring Gardens and the Rococo in England
The Spring Gardens were the most prominent vehicle in England for the public display of the new Rococo style. The earliest pictorial representation of Tyers’ Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, is the “Vauxhall fan” (1736), an etching printed in blue designed to be pasted to a fan; it shows the earliest groups of pavilions, in a sober classical taste, but the interiors of the supper boxes were painted by members of Hogarth’s St. Martin’s Lane Academy, prominent among them Francis Hayman. Hayman provided most of the subjects, which were rapidly executed by students and assistants; Hubert Gravelot provided designs for two others, and Hogarth’s designs were pressed into service in hastily dashed-off copies that filled the back of every box. At a certain hour, all the paintings were let down at once, to offer some security to the companies at supper and a suitable backdrop, one observer thought, for the live beauties of London. Frederick, Prince of Wales, who had come to England with his father George II in 1728 and who was a prominent patron of the Rococo, took sufficient interest in the Gardens to have his own pavilion built from the very first.

The first fully Rococo structure erected at the Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, was the “Turkish Tent” that was still a novelty in 1744; “this fantastic structure introduced that element of frivolous impermanence which became so characteristic of Vauxhall,” David Coke has remarked. In the course of the 1740s it was joined by other examples of Rococo chinoiserie and above all by the Rotunda, with the most-viewed Rococo interior decoration in England, designed by George Michael Moser, another member of the St. Martin’s Lane Academy; the ornaments were “Executed by French and Italians” George Vertue noted.

The Experience
Enormous crowds could be accommodated at Spring Gardens, Vauxhall. In 1749 a rehearsal of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks attracted an audience of 12,000, and in 1786 a fancy dress jubilee to celebrate the proprietor’s long ownership was thronged with 61,000 revellers. Many of the best known musicians and singers of the day performed at the Gardens, for example Sophia Baddeley. In 1732, their fashionable status was confirmed by a fancy dress ball attended by Frederick, Prince of Wales. At that time access from the West End was by water, but the opening of Westminster Bridge in the 1740s made access easier though less charming.

An entertainment in Vauxhall Gardens in c.1779 by Thomas Rowlandson. The two women in the centre are Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and her sister Lady Duncannon. The man seated at the table on the left is Samuel Johnson, with James Boswell to his left and Oliver Goldsmith to his right. To the right the actress and author Mary Darby Robinson stands next to the Prince of Wales, later George IV

An entertainment in Vauxhall Gardens in c.1779 by Thomas Rowlandson. The two women in the centre are Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and her sister Lady Duncannon. The man seated at the table on the left is Samuel Johnson, with James Boswell to his left and Oliver Goldsmith to his right. To the right the actress and author Mary Darby Robinson stands next to the Prince of Wales, later George IV

The main walks were lit at night by hundreds of lamps. Over time more features and eye catchers were added: additional supper boxes, a music room, a Chinese pavilion, a gothic orchestra that accommodated fifty musicians, and ruins, arches, statues and a cascade. An admission charge was introduced from the beginning and later James Boswell wrote:

Vauxhall Gardens is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious show, — gay exhibition, musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear; — for all of which only a shilling is paid; and, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who choose to purchase that regale.

The unlighted ‘dark walks’ or ‘close walks’ were known as a place for amorous adventures. Thomas Brown in “Works Serious and Comical in Prose and Verse” (1760) says:

The ladies that have an inclination to be private, take delight in the close walks of Spring-Gardens, where both sexes meet, and mutually serve one another as guides to lose their way; and the windings and turnings in the little wildernesses are so intricate, that the most experienced mothers have often lost themselves in looking for their daughters.”

A great part of the entertainment was offered by the well-dressed company itself. Pauses between pieces of music were intentionally long enough to give the crowd time to circulate the Gardens anew. M. Grosely, in his Tour to London (1772) says, relating to Ranelagh Gardens and Vauxhall:

These entertainments, which begin in the month of May, are continued every night. They bring together persons of all ranks and conditions; and amongst these, a considerable number of females, whose charms want only that cheerful air, which is the flower and quintessence of beauty. These places serve equally as a rendezvous either for business or intrigue. They form, as it were, private coteries; there you see fathers and mothers, with their children, enjoying domestic happiness in the midst of public diversions. The English assert, that such entertainments as these can never subsist in France, on account of the levity of the people. Certain it is, that those of Vauxhall and Ranelagh, which are guarded only by outward decency, are conducted without tumult and disorder, which often disturb the public diversions of France. I do not know whether the English are gainers thereby; the joy which they seem in search of at those places does not beam through their countenances; they look as grave at Vauxhall and Ranelagh as at the Bank, at church, or a private club. All persons there seem to say, what a young English nobleman said to his governor, Am I as joyous as I should be?

The new name Vauxhall Gardens, long in popular use, was made official in 1785. After Boswell’s time the admission charge rose steadily: to two shillings in 1792, three-and-sixpence in the early 19th century, and 4/6 in the 1820s. Season tickets were also sold. Entertainment in this period included hot air balloon ascents, fireworks, and tightrope walkers. In 1813 there was a fête to celebrate victory at the Battle of Vitoria, and in 1827 the Battle of Waterloo was re-enacted by 1,000 soldiers.

The contributor to the Edinburgh Encyclopedia (1830 edition) comments that:
the garden’s great attraction arises from their being splendidly illuminated at light with about 15,000 glass lamps. These being tastefully hung among the trees, which line the walks, produce an impression similar to that which is called up on reading some of the stories in the Arabian Nights Entertainments. On some occasions there have been upwards of 19,000 persons in them, and this immense concourse, most of whom are well dressed, seen in connection with the illuminated walks, add not a little to the brilliant and astonishing effect of the whole scene.

Charles Dickens wrote of a daylight visit to Vauxhall Gardens, in Sketches by Boz, published in 1836:
We paid our shilling at the gate, and then we saw for the first time, that the entrance, if there had been any magic about it at all, was now decidedly disenchanted, being, in fact, nothing more nor less than a combination of very roughly-painted boards and sawdust. We glanced at the orchestra and supper-room as we hurried past—we just recognised them, and that was all. We bent our steps to the firework-ground; there, at least, we should not be disappointed. We reached it, and stood rooted to the spot with mortification and astonishment. That the Moorish tower—that wooden shed with a door in the centre, and daubs of crimson and yellow all round, like a gigantic watch-case! That the place where night after night we had beheld the undaunted Mr. Blackmore make his terrific ascent, surrounded by flames of fire, and peals of artillery, and where the white garments of Madame Somebody (we forget even her name now), who nobly devoted her life to the manufacture of fireworks, had so often been seen fluttering in the wind, as she called up a red, blue, or party-coloured light to illumine her temple!

The Gardens feature in a number of other works of literature. They are the scene for a brief but pivotal turning point in the fortunes of anti-heroine Becky Sharp in William Makepeace Thackeray’s 19th-century novel Vanity Fair, as well as a setting in his novel Pendennis. Thomas Hardy sets scenes in his The Dynasts in the Gardens. As well as Cecilia by Frances Burney where the character Mr Harrell commits suicide.

The Gardens passed through several hands. In 1840, the owners went bankrupt and the Gardens closed. They were revived the following year, and again in 1842 under new management, but in 1859 they closed for good.

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The Pentridge Uprising: Foiled by Oliver the Spy and Lord Sidmouth

Posted on July 17, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The Pentridge Uprising plays a role in my Work in Progress, A Touch of Love, which is book 6 in my highly popular Realm Series. I thought I would share some of my research on the event.

The Pentrich (originally Pentridge) rising was an armed uprising in 1817 that began around the village of Pentrich, Derbyshire, in the United Kingdom. It occurred on the nights of 9/10 June 1817. The name is controversial. While much of the planning took place in Pentrich, two of the three ringleaders were from South Wingfield and the other was from Sutton in Ashfield; the ‘revolution’ itself started from Hunt’s Barn in South Wingfield, and the only person killed died in Wingfield Park.

A gathering of some two or three hundred men (stockingers, quarrymen and iron workers), led by Jeremiah Brandreth (‘The Nottingham Captain’), an unemployed stockinger, and claimed by Gyles Brandreth as an ancestor – although unlikely since Brandreth’s children emigrated to America, set out from South Wingfield to march to Nottingham. They were lightly armed with pikes, scythes and a few guns, which had been hidden in a quarry in Wingfield Park, and had a set of rather unfocussed revolutionary demands, including the wiping out of the National Debt.

The organizer of the event turned out to be a government spy, who became known as Oliver the Spy and the uprising was quashed soon after it began. William (J) Oliver aka ‘Oliver the Spy’ aka W.J Richards – was a 19th-century informer, and suspected agent provocateur, employed by the English Home Office against the Luddites and similar groupings. He appears to have played a significant role in thwarting the Pentridge or Pentrich Rising of 1817, leading to the execution of Brandreth, Ludlam and Turner.
William Oliver was a building surveyor who had been imprisoned for debt before he was recruited by the foreign office. His shadowy role is commemorated in Charles Lamb’s poem,’The Three Graves.’Three men were hanged for their participation in the Pentridge uprising,including Brandreth.

Historical Background
Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 a number of factors combined to drive the country into a severe depression. The increased industrialisation of the country, combined with the demobilisation of the forces, led to mass unemployment. The Corn Laws led to massive increases in the price of bread, while the repeal of Income Tax meant that the war debt had to be recovered by taxing commodities forcing their prices even higher. In addition, 1816 was unusually wet and cold, producing a very poor harvest.

The loss of production of war materials had affected engineering companies like the Butterley Company, the price of iron ore had slumped, and the production of coal had fallen by a third. The hosiery trade had also been falling away for about five years.

There was, in addition, a wider political picture. Since the previous century, there had been calls for parliamentary reform, particularly an end to the rotten boroughs. Subsequently there had been the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror and it appeared that any reform would be accompanied by violence, which Pitt’s government set out to pre-empt by increasingly punitive measures.

Prelude
Since 1811, there had been minor local uprisings, with stocking frames being smashed in protest at the employment of unskilled workers to produce low quality stockings. Further afield, there had been food riots in many of the big cities.

Around the country there were a number of secret revolutionary committees. The one at Nottingham was headed by a needle maker, William Stevens, and its representative from Pentrich was a framework knitter called Thomas Bacon. Several meetings were held at Pentrich during which Bacon asserted that preparations for an uprising were well advanced, and he had made enquiries at the ironworks and elsewhere about procuring weaponry.

The person appointed by Stevens to be his deputy was Jeremiah Brandreth, an unemployed stocking knitter with a wife and two children. Opinion of him at the time seems to have been somewhat mixed, but he promised the men that they would go to Nottingham, invading Butterley ironworks on the way, where they would kill the three senior managers and ransack it for weapons. At Nottingham they would receive bread, beef and ale, and a sum of money, and they would take over the barracks. They would then proceed by boat down the River Trent and attack Newark. He told them that there were sixteen thousand ready to join them.

Among those present were Isaac Ludlam, a bankrupted farmer who owned a small quarry where he had built up a small cache of pikes, and William Turner an ex-soldier. The plan was to assemble at ten o’clock on the 8th June, where Ludlam’s pikes would be distributed and further weapons would be acquired by requisitioning a man and a gun from each house that they passed.

The March

St Matthew's Church, Pentrich, Derbyshire, UK

St Matthew’s Church, Pentrich, Derbyshire, UK

Around fifty men assembled in South Wingfield and for four hours ranged around the neighbourhood for weapons and extra men. At one house a widow, Mary Hepworth, lived with her two sons. When she refused to open up, the rioters broke a window and Brandreth fired a shot through it, killing a servant. Some of the party were appalled at this wanton act, but Brandreth threatened to shoot them also if they did not remain.

Eventually the group set out for the Butterley Company works. When they arrived they were confronted by George Goodwin the factory agent, who, with a few constables, faced them down. One or two of the party defected and, increasingly demoralised, the remainder headed for Ripley.

There was no police force at that time. Order was maintained by the various semi-private armies such as the yeomanry, while intelligence was gathered by the Home Secretary, Lord Sidmouth, from a network formed of local magistrates and paid informers. One such, William Oliver, was among the group. Indeed there were accusations that Oliver was something more—an agent provocateur under the Home Office’s instruction. Be that as it may, Sidmouth was well aware of what was afoot.

Through Ripley they pressed more followers into service and at Codnor and Langley Mill they awoke various publicans for beer, bread and cheese. It was now raining heavily and yet more men defected.

At Giltbrook they were met by a small force of soldiers: twenty men of the 15th Regiment of Light Dragoons. The revolutionaries scattered and, while about forty were captured, the leaders managed to escape, to be arrested over the following months.

Retribution
Altogether, eighty-five of the marchers were placed in Nottingham and Derby gaols, to be brought to trial at the County Hall in Derby, charged in the main of “maliciously and traitorously [endeavouring]…by force of arms, to subvert and destroy the Government and the Constitution.” Twenty-three were sentenced, three to transportation for fourteen years and eleven for life. Brandreth, Ludlam and Turner were convicted of high treason and sentenced to death. Although the customary quartering was remitted by the Prince Regent, the three were publicly hanged and beheaded at Nuns Green in front of Friar Gate Gaol in Derby.

There is little to be seen nowadays of the event, but the hexagonal office, where Goodwin stood his ground, still exists in the yard of the Butterley Company’s works.
E. P. Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class sees this rising as a transitional event between the earlier Luddite actions and the later populist Radicalism of 1818–20 and 1830–32. (Note that Thompson refers to the village throughout as ‘Pentridge,’ not the modern spelling.)

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Regency Celebrity: Princess Caraboo, Extraordinary Imposter

Posted on July 16, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

"Princess Caraboo" From an engraving by Henry Meyer, after a picture by Edward Bird

“Princess Caraboo” From an engraving by Henry Meyer, after a picture by Edward Bird

Mary Baker (née Willcocks) (1791 – 24 December 1864) was a noted impostor who went by the name Princess Caraboo. She pretended to be from a far away island and fooled a British town for some months.

Biography
On 3 April 1817, a cobbler in Almondsbury in Gloucestershire, England, met an apparently disoriented young woman with exotic clothes, who was speaking a language no one could understand. The cobbler’s wife took her to the Overseer of the Poor, who left her in the hands of the local county magistrate, Samuel Worrall, who lived in Knole Park. Worrall and his American-born wife Elizabeth could not understand her either; all they could determine was that she called herself ‘Caraboo’ and that she was interested in Chinese imagery. They sent her to the local inn, where she identified a drawing of a pineapple with the word ‘ananas,’ which means pineapple in many Indo-European languages, and insisted on sleeping on the floor. Samuel Worrall declared she was a beggar and should be taken to Bristol and tried for vagrancy.

During her imprisonment, a Portuguese sailor named Manuel Eynesso (or Enes) said he knew the language and translated her story. According to Enes, she was Princess Caraboo from the island of Javasu in the Indian Ocean. She had been captured by pirates and after a long voyage she had jumped overboard in the Bristol Channel and swam ashore.

The Worralls brought Caraboo back to their home. For the next ten weeks, this representative of exotic royalty was a favourite of the local dignitaries. She used a bow and arrow, fenced, swam naked and prayed to a god, whom she termed Alla-Tallah. She acquired exotic clothing and a portrait made of her was reproduced in local newspapers. Her authenticity was attested to by a Dr Wilkinson who identified her language using Edmund Fry’s Pantographia and stated that marks on the back of her head were the work of oriental surgeons.

Baker’s Javasu Writing
Eventually the truth came out. A boarding-house keeper, Mrs. Neale, recognised her from the picture in the Bristol Journal and informed her hosts. The would-be princess was actually a cobbler’s daughter, Mary Baker (née Willcocks) from Witheridge, Devon. She had been a servant girl in various places all over England but had not found a place to stay. She had invented a fictitious language out of imaginary and gypsy words and created an exotic character. The strange marks on her skin were the scars from a crude cupping operation in a poorhouse hospital in London. The British press had a field day at the expense of the duped rustic middle-class.

Her hosts arranged for her to leave for Philadelphia, and she departed 28 June 1817.
On 13 September 1817, a letter was printed in the Bristol Journal, allegedly from Sir Hudson Lowe, the official in charge of the exiled Emperor Napoleon on St. Helena. It claimed that after the Philadelphia-bound ship bearing the beautiful Caraboo had been driven close to the island by a tempest, the intrepid princess had impulsively cut herself adrift in a small boat, rowed ashore and so fascinated the emperor that he was applying to the Pope for a dispensation to marry her. The story is unverified.

In the USA, she briefly continued her role, appearing on-stage at the Washington Hall, Philadelphia, as ‘Princess Caraboo,’ but with little success. Her last contact with the Worralls was a letter from New York in November 1817, in which she complained of her notoriety. She appears to have returned to Philadelphia until she finally left America in 1824, returning to England.

In 1824 she returned to Britain and briefly exhibited herself in New Bond Street, London, as ‘Princess Caraboo’ but her act was no longer very successful. She may have briefly travelled to France and Spain in her guise but soon returned to England. In September 1828, she was living as a widow in Bedminster under the name Mary Burgess (in reality the name of a cousin). There she married a Richard Baker, and gave birth to a daughter the next year. In 1839, she was selling leeches to the Bristol Infirmary Hospital. She died on 24 December 1864 and was buried in the Hebron Road cemetery in Bristol.

Film
The hoax was the basis of the 1994 film Princess Caraboo, written by Michael Austin and John Wells, which added some fictional incidents to the true story.

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The Scotsman, a Regency Era Newspaper, Which Has Survived to Modern Times

Posted on July 15, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

The_Scotsman The Scotsman is a Scottish compact newspaper published from Edinburgh. It was a broadsheet until 16 August 2004. Its sister publication, the Sunday newspaper Scotland on Sunday, remains a broadsheet. The Scotsman Publications Ltd also issues the Edinburgh Evening News and the Herald & Post series of free newspapers in Edinburgh, Fife, and West Lothian.

As of November 2012, it had an audited print circulation of 28,500, down from 35,949 in 2012 (Jan – Aug average) and 42,581 in August 2011. Scotsman.com websites, including the news site, job site, property site, mobile site and others have an average of 105,959 visitors a day.

History
The Scotsman was launched in 1817 as a liberal weekly newspaper by lawyer William Ritchie and customs official Charles Maclaren in response to the “unblushing subservience” of competing newspapers to the Edinburgh establishment. The paper was pledged to “impartiality, firmness and independence.”

William Ritchie (1781 – 4 February 1831) was a Scottish lawyer, journalist and newspaper owner. He was born at Lundin Mill, Fife, where his father had a flax dressing business.
At the age of 19 he moved to Edinburgh, and after some years employment in the offices of two firms of solicitors, he joined the Society of Solicitors in the Supreme Courts of Scotland in 1808.

After contributing to various publications for a number of years, in 1816 he joined with Charles Maclaren, his elder brother John Ritchie and John Ramsay McCulloch in founding The Scotsman newspaper, the first number of which appeared the following year. Ritchie was joint editor of the paper with Maclaren until Ritchie’s death in 1831.

In 1824 he published Essays on Constitutional Law and Forms of Process and in 1827 was appointed a commissioner under the Improvements Act. He campaigned for reform of policing and prison conditions, especially for poor debtors.

Charles Maclaren FRSE FGS (7 October 1782 – 10 September 1866) was a Scottish journalist and geologist. He co-founded The Scotsman newspaper, and edited the 6th Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.

Maclaren was born in Ormiston, Haddingtonshire, the son of a farmer and cattle-dealer. He was almost entirely self-educated, and when a young man became a mercantile clerk in Edinburgh. In 1817, with John Ritchie, John Ramsay McCulloch and William Ritchie, he established The Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh and at first acted as its editor. Offered a post as clerk in the custom house, he resigned his editorial position, resuming it in 1820, and resigning it again in 1845. In 1820, Maclaren was appointed editor of the sixth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. From 1864-1866 he was president of the Edinburgh Geological Society, in which city he died in 1866.

Its modern editorial line is firmly anti-independence. After the abolition of newspaper stamp tax in Scotland in 1850, The Scotsman was relaunched as a daily newspaper priced at 1d and a circulation of 6,000 copies.

In 1953 the newspaper was bought by Canadian millionaire Roy Thomson who was in the process of building a large media group. The paper was bought in 1995 by David and Frederick Barclay for £85 million. They moved the newspaper from its Edinburgh office on North Bridge, which is now an upmarket hotel, to modern offices in Holyrood Road designed by Edinburgh architects CDA, near the subsequent location of the Scottish Parliament Building.

In December 2005, The Scotsman was acquired, in a £160 million deal, by its present owners Johnston Press a company founded in Scotland and now one of the top three largest local newspaper publishers in the UK.

Ian Stewart has been the editor since June 2012, after a reshuffle of senior management in April 2012, during which John McLellan who was the paper’s Editor-in-Chief was dismissed. Ian Stewart was previously editor of Edinburgh Evening News and remains as the editor of Scotland on Sunday.

In 2012, The Scotsman was named Newspaper of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards.

Editors
1817: William Ritchie
1817: Charles Maclaren
1818: John Ramsay McCulloch
1843: John Hill Burton (acting)
1846: Alexander Russel
1876: Robert Wallace
1880: Charles Alfred Cooper
1905: John Pettigrew Croal
1924: George A. Waters
1944: James Murray Watson
1955: John Buchanan (acting)
1956: Alastair Dunnett
1972: Eric MacKay
1985: Chris Baur
1988: Magnus Linklater
1994: Andrew Jaspan
1995: James Seaton
1997: Martin Clarke
1998: Alan Ruddock
2000: Tim Luckhurst
2000: Rebecca Hardy
2001: Iain Martin
2004: John McGurk
2006: Mike Gilson
2009: John McLellan
2012: Ian Stewart
Source: The Scotsman Digital Archive

Scotsman.com
Since 1998, the Scotsman has had an internet portal that features the latest news, sports, business, property, motors and sport in different sections of the site. It has had live webcams and panoramas around Scotland. It also has sections for other Scotsman Publications including Scotland on Sunday and the Evening News.

Posted in British history, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities, Scotland, Victorian era | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Scotsman, a Regency Era Newspaper, Which Has Survived to Modern Times

Historic Covent Garden

Posted on July 12, 2013 by Regina Jeffers

Royal Opera House

Royal Opera House

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin’s Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as “Covent Garden.” The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal’s Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the elegant buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the London Transport Museum.

Though mainly fields until the 16th century, the area was briefly settled when it became the heart of the Anglo-Saxon trading town of Lundenwic. After the town was abandoned, part of the area was walled off by 1200 for use as arable land and orchards by Westminster Abbey, and was referred to as “the garden of the Abbey and Convent”. The land, now called “the Covent Garden,” was seized by Henry VIII, and granted to the Earls of Bedford in 1552. The 4th Earl commissioned Inigo Jones to build some fine houses to attract wealthy tenants. Jones designed the Italianate arcaded square along with the church of St Paul’s. The design of the square was new to London, and had a significant influence on modern town planning, acting as the prototype for the laying-out of new estates as London grew. A small open-air fruit and vegetable market had developed on the south side of the fashionable square by 1654. Gradually, both the market and the surrounding area fell into disrepute, as taverns, theatres, coffee-houses and brothels opened up; the gentry moved away, and rakes, wits and playwrights moved in. By the 18th century it had become a well-known red-light district, attracting notable prostitutes. An Act of Parliament was drawn up to control the area, and Charles Fowler’s neo-classical building was erected in 1830 to cover and help organise the market. The area declined as a pleasure-ground as the market grew and further buildings were added: the Floral Hall, Charter Market, and in 1904 the Jubilee Market. By the end of the 1960s traffic congestion was causing problems, and in 1974 the market relocated to the New Covent Garden Market about three miles (5 km) south-west at Nine Elms. The central building re-opened as a shopping centre in 1980, and is now a tourist location containing cafes, pubs, small shops, and a craft market called the Apple Market, along with another market held in the Jubilee Hall.

Covent Garden, with the postcode WC2, falls within the London boroughs of Westminster and Camden, and the parliamentary constituencies of Cities of London and Westminster and Holborn and St Pancras. The area has been served by the Piccadilly line at Covent Garden tube station since 1907; the journey from Leicester Square, at 300 yards, is the shortest in London.

History
Early History
The route of the Strand on the southern boundary of what was to become Covent Garden was used during the Roman period as part of a route to Silchester, known as “Iter VII” on the Antonine Itinerary. Excavations in 2006 at St Martin-in-the-Fields revealed a Roman grave, suggesting the site had sacred significance. The area to the north of the Strand was long thought to have remained as unsettled fields until the 16th century, but theories by Alan Vince and Martin Biddle that there had been an Anglo-Saxon settlement to the west of the old Roman town of Londinium were borne out by excavations in 1985 and 2005. These revealed Covent Garden as the centre of a trading town called Lundenwic, developed around 600 AD, which stretched from Trafalgar Square to Aldwych. Alfred the Great gradually shifted the settlement into the old Roman town of Londinium from around 886 AD onwards, leaving no mark of the old town, and the site returned to fields.

Around 1200 the first mention of an abbey garden appears in a document mentioning a walled garden owned by the Benedictine monks of the Abbey of St. Peter, Westminster. A later document, dated between 1250 and 1283, refers to “the garden of the Abbot and Convent of Westminster.” By the 13th century this had become a 40-acre (16 ha) quadrangle of mixed orchard, meadow, pasture and arable land, lying between modern-day St. Martin’s Lane and Drury Lane, and Floral Street and Maiden Lane. The use of the name “Covent”—an Anglo-French term for a religious community, equivalent to “monastery” or “convent”—appears in a document in 1515, when the Abbey, which had been letting out parcels of land along the north side of the Strand for inns and market gardens, granted a lease of the walled garden, referring to it as “a garden called Covent Garden”. This is how it was recorded from then on.

The Bedford Estate (1552–1918)
After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1540, Henry VIII took for himself the land belonging to Westminster Abbey, including the convent garden and seven acres to the north called Long Acre; and in 1552 his son, Edward VI, granted it to John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford. The Russell family, who in 1694 were advanced in their peerage from Earl to Duke of Bedford, held the land from 1552 to 1918.

Russell had Bedford House and garden built on part of the land, with an entrance on the Strand, the large garden stretching back along the south side of the old walled-off convent garden. Apart from this, and allowing several poor-quality tenements to be erected, the Russells did little with the land until the 4th Earl of Bedford, Francis Russell, an active and ambitious businessman, commissioned Inigo Jones in 1630 to design and build a church and three terraces of fine houses around a large square or piazza. The commission had been prompted by Charles I taking offence at the condition of the road and houses along Long Acre, which were the responsibility of Russell and Henry Carey, 2nd Earl of Monmouth. Russell and Carey complained that under the 1625 Proclamation concerning Buildings, which restricted building in and around London, they could not build new houses; the King then granted Russell, for a fee of £2,000, a licence to build as many new houses on his land as he “shall thinke fitt and convenient.” The church of St Paul’s was the first building, begun in July 1631 on the western side of the square. The last house was completed in 1637.

The houses initially attracted the wealthy, though when a market developed on the south side of the square around 1654, the aristocracy moved out and coffee houses, taverns, and prostitutes moved in. The Bedford Estate was expanded in 1669 to include Bloomsbury, when Lord Russell married Lady Rachel Vaughan, one of the daughters of the 4th Earl of Southampton.

By the 18th century Covent Garden had become a well-known red-light district, attracting notable prostitutes such as Betty Careless and Jane Douglas. Descriptions of the prostitutes and where to find them were provided by Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, the “essential guide and accessory for any serious gentleman of pleasure.” In 1830 a market hall was built to provide a more permanent trading centre. In 1913, Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford agreed to sell the Covent Garden Estate for £2 million to the MP and land speculator Harry Mallaby-Deeley, who sold his option in 1918 to the Beecham family for £250,000.

Governance
The Covent Garden estate was originally under the control of Westminster Abbey and lay in the parish of St Margaret. During a reorganisation in 1542, it was transferred to St Martin in the Fields, and then in 1645 a new parish was created, splitting governance of the estate between the parishes of St Paul Covent Garden and St Martin, both still within the Liberty of Westminster. St Paul Covent Garden was completely surrounded by the parish of St Martin in the Fields. It was grouped into the Strand District in 1855 when it came within the area of responsibility of the Metropolitan Board of Works.

In 1889 the parish became part of the County of London and in 1900 it became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Westminster. It was abolished as a civil parish in 1922. Since 1965, Covent Garden falls within the London boroughs of Westminster and Camden, and is in the Parliamentary constituencies of Cities of London and Westminster and Holborn and St Pancras.

Modern Changes
Charles Fowler’s 1830 neo-classical building restored to use as a retail market
The Covent Garden Estate was part of Beecham Estates and Pills Limited from 1924 to 1928, after which time it was managed by a successor company called Covent Garden Properties Company Limited, owned by the Beechams and other private investors. This new company sold some properties at Covent Garden, while becoming active in property investment in other parts of London. In 1962 the bulk of the remaining properties in the Covent Garden area, including the market, were sold to the newly established government-owned Covent Garden Authority for £3,925,000.

By the end of the 1960s, traffic congestion had reached such a level that the use of the square as a modern wholesale distribution market was becoming unsustainable, and significant redevelopment was planned. Following a public outcry, buildings around the square were protected in 1973, preventing redevelopment. The following year the market moved to a new site in south-west London. The square languished until its central building re-opened as a shopping centre in 1980. An action plan was drawn up by Westminster Council in 2004 in consultation with residents and businesses to improve the area while retaining its historic character. The market buildings, along with several other properties in Covent Garden, were bought by a property company in 2006.

Geography

Staple Inn, with its distinctive timber-framed façade, on the south side of High Holborn.

Staple Inn, with its distinctive timber-framed façade, on the south side of High Holborn.

Historically, the Bedford Estate defined the boundary of Covent Garden, with Drury Lane to the east, the Strand to the south, St. Martin’s Lane to the west, and Long Acre to the north. However, over time the area has expanded northwards past Long Acre to High Holborn. Shelton Street, running parallel to the north of Long Acre, marks the boundary between Westminster Council and Camden London Borough Council. Long Acre is the main thoroughfare, running north-east from St Martin’s Lane to Drury Lane.

The area to the south of Long Acre contains the Royal Opera House, the market and central square, and most of the elegant buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and the London Transport Museum; while the area to the north of Long Acre is largely given over to independent retail units centred on Neal Street, Neal’s Yard and Seven Dials; though this area also contains residential buildings such as Odhams Walk, built in 1981 on the site of the Odhams print works, and is home to over 6,000 residents.

Economy
The area’s historic association with the retail and entertainment economy continues. In 1979, Covent Garden Market reopened as a retail centre; in 2010, the largest Apple Store in the world opened in The Piazza. The central hall has shops, cafes and bars alongside the Apple Market stalls selling antiques, jewellery, clothing and gifts; there are additional casual stalls in the Jubilee Hall Market on the south side of the square. Long Acre has a range of clothes shops and boutiques, and Neal Street is noted for its large number of shoe shops. London Transport Museum and the side entrance to the Royal Opera House box office and other facilities are also located on the square. During the late 1970s and 1980s the Rock Garden music venue was popular with up and coming punk rock and New Wave artists.

The market halls and several other buildings in Covent Garden were bought by CapCo in partnership with GE Real Estate in August 2006 for £421 million, on a 150-year head lease. The buildings are let to the Covent Garden Area Trust, who pay an annual peppercorn rent of one red apple and a posy of flowers for each head lease, and the Trust protects the property from being redeveloped. In March 2007 CapCo also acquired the shops located under the Royal Opera House. The complete Covent Garden Estate owned by CapCo consists of 550,000 sq ft (51,000 m2), and has a market value of £650 million.

Landmarks
The Royal Opera House, often referred to as simply “Covent Garden,” was constructed as the “Theatre Royal” in 1732 to a design by Edward Shepherd. During the first hundred years or so of its history, the theatre was primarily a playhouse, with the Letters Patent granted by Charles II giving Covent Garden and Theatre Royal, Drury Lane exclusive rights to present spoken drama in London. In 1734, the first ballet was presented; a year later Handel’s first season of operas began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premières here. It has been the home of The Royal Opera since 1945, and the Royal Ballet since 1946.

The current building is the third theatre on the site following destructive fires in 1808 and 1857. The façade, foyer and auditorium were designed by Edward Barry, and date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive £178 million reconstruction in the 1990s. The Royal Opera House seats 2,268 people and consists of four tiers of boxes and balconies and the amphitheatre gallery. The stage performance area is roughly 15 metres square. The main auditorium is a Grade 1 listed building. The inclusion of the adjacent old Floral Hall, previously a part of the old Covent Garden Market, created a new and extensive public gathering place. In 1779 the pavement outside the playhouse was the scene of the murder of Martha Ray, mistress of the Earl of Sandwich, by her admirer the Rev. James Hackman.

Covent Garden Square

Balthazar Nebot's 1737 painting of the square before the 1830 market hall was constructed

Balthazar Nebot’s 1737 painting of the square before the 1830 market hall was constructed

The central square in Covent Garden is simply called “Covent Garden”, often marketed as “Covent Garden Piazza” to distinguish it from the eponymous surrounding area. Laid out in 1630, it was the first modern square in London, and was originally a flat, open space or piazza with low railings. A casual market started on the south side, and by 1830 the present market hall was built. The space is popular with street performers, who audition with the site’s owners for an allocated slot. The square was originally laid out when the 4th Earl of Bedford, Francis Russell, commissioned Inigo Jones to design and build a church and three terraces of fine houses around the site of a former walled garden belonging to Westminster Abbey. Jones’s design was informed by his knowledge of modern town planning in Europe, particularly Piazza d’Arme, in Leghorn, Tuscany, Piazza San Marco in Venice, Piazza Santissima Annunziata in Florence, and the Place des Vosges in Paris. The centrepiece of the project was the large square, the concept of which was new to London, and this had a significant influence on modern town planning in the city, acting as the prototype for the laying-out of new estates as the metropolis grew. Isaac de Caus, the French Huguenot architect, designed the individual houses under Jones’s overall design.

The church of St Paul’s was the first building, and was begun in July 1631 on the western side of the square. The last house was completed in 1637. Seventeen of the houses had arcaded portico walks organised in groups of four and six either side of James Street on the north side, and three and four either side of Russell Street. These arcades, rather than the square itself, took the name Piazza; the group from James Street to Russell Street became known as the “Great Piazza” and that to the south of Russell Street as the “Little Piazza.” None of Inigo Jones’s houses remain, though part of the north group was reconstructed in 1877–79 as Bedford Chambers by William Cubitt to a design by Henry Clutton.

Covent Garden Market
The first record of a “new market in Covent Garden” is in 1654 when market traders set up stalls against the garden wall of Bedford House. The Earl of Bedford acquired a private charter from Charles II in 1670 for a fruit and vegetable market, permitting him and his heirs to hold a market every day except Sundays and Christmas Day. The original market, consisting of wooden stalls and sheds, became disorganised and disorderly, and the 6th Earl requested an Act of Parliament in 1813 to regulate it, then commissioned Charles Fowler in 1830 to design the neo-classical market building that is the heart of Covent Garden today. The contractor was William Cubitt and Company. Further buildings were added—the Floral hall, Charter Market, and in 1904 the Jubilee Market for foreign flowers was built by Cubitt and Howard.

By the end of the 1960s, traffic congestion was causing problems for the market, which required increasingly large lorries for deliveries and distribution. Redevelopment was considered, but protests from the Covent Garden Community Association in 1973 prompted the Home Secretary, Robert Carr, to give dozens of buildings around the square listed-building status, preventing redevelopment. The following year the market relocated to its new site, New Covent Garden Market, about three miles (5 km) south-west at Nine Elms. The central building re-opened as a shopping centre in 1980, with cafes, pubs, small shops and a craft market called the Apple Market. Another market, the Jubilee Market, is held in the Jubilee Hall on the south side of the square. The market halls and several other buildings in Covent Garden have been owned by the property company Capital & Counties Properties (CapCo) since 2006.

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Interior of the Drury Lane Theatre by Pugin and Rowlandson, 1808

Interior of the Drury Lane Theatre by Pugin and Rowlandson, 1808

The current Theatre Royal on Drury Lane is the most recent of four incarnations, the first of which opened in 1663, making it the oldest continuously used theatre in London. For much of its first two centuries, it was, along with the Royal Opera House, a patent theatre granted rights in London for the production of drama, and had a claim to be one of London’s leading theatres. The first theatre, known as “Theatre Royal, Bridges Street,” saw performances by Nell Gwyn and Charles Hart. After it was destroyed by fire in 1672, English dramatist and theatre manager Thomas Killigrew engaged Christopher Wren to build a larger theatre on the same spot, which opened in 1674. This building lasted nearly 120 years, under leadership including Colley Cibber, David Garrick, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. In 1791, under Sheridan’s management, the building was demolished to make way for a larger theatre which opened in 1794; but that survived only 15 years, burning down in 1809. The building that stands today opened in 1812. It has been home to actors as diverse as Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean, child actress Clara Fisher, comedian Dan Leno, the comedy troupe Monty Python (who recorded a concert album there), and musical composer and performer Ivor Novello. Since November 2008 the theatre has been owned by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and generally stages popular musical theatre. It is a Grade I listed building.

London Transport Museum
The London Transport Museum is in a Victorian iron and glass building on the east side of the market square. It was designed as a dedicated flower market by William Rogers of William Cubitt and Company in 1871, and was first occupied by the museum in 1980. Previously the transport collection had been held at Syon Park and Clapham. The first parts of the collection were brought together at the beginning of the 20th century by the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) when it began to preserve buses being retired from service. After the LGOC was taken over by the London Electric Railway (LER), the collection was expanded to include rail vehicles. It continued to expand after the LER became part of the London Passenger Transport Board in the 1930s and as the organisation passed through various successor bodies up to TfL, London’s transport authority since 2000. The Covent Garden building has on display many examples of buses, trams, trolleybuses and rail vehicles from 19th and 20th centuries as well as artefacts and exhibits related to the operation and marketing of passenger services and the impact that the developing transport network has had on the city and its population.

St Paul’s Church
St Paul’s, commonly known as the Actors’ Church, was designed by Inigo Jones as part of a commission by Francis Russell in 1631 to create “houses and buildings fitt for the habitacons of Gentlemen and men of ability.” Work on the church began that year and was completed in 1633, at a cost of £4,000, with it becoming consecrated in 1638. In 1645 Covent Garden was made a separate parish and the church was dedicated to St Paul. It is uncertain how much of Jones’s original building is left, as the church was damaged by fire in 1795 during restoration work by Thomas Hardwick; though it is believed that the columns are original—the rest is mostly Georgian or Victorian reconstruction.

Culture
The Covent Garden area has long been associated with both entertainment and shopping, and this continues. Covent Garden has 13 theatres, and over 60 pubs and bars, with most south of Long Acre, around the main shopping area of the old market. The Seven Dials area in the north of Covent Garden was home to the punk rock club The Roxy in 1977, and the area remains focused on young people with its trendy mid-market retail outlets.

Street Performance
Street entertainment at Covent Garden was noted in Samuel Pepys’s diary in May 1662, when he recorded the first mention of a Punch and Judy show in Britain. Impromptu performances of song and swimming were given by local celebrity William Cussans in the eighteenth century. Covent Garden is licensed for street entertainment, and performers audition for timetabled slots in a number of venues around the market, including the North Hall, West Piazza, and South Hall Courtyard. The courtyard space is dedicated to classical music only. There are street performances at Covent Garden Market every day of the year, except Christmas Day. Shows run throughout the day and are about 30 minutes in length. In March 2008, the market owner, CapCo, proposed to reduce street performances to one 30-minute show each hour.

Pubs and Bars
The Covent Garden area has over 60 pubs and bars, with several of them listed buildings as well as being on CAMRA’s National Inventory. The Harp in Chandos Place has received several awards, including London Pub of the Year in 2008 by the Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood, and National Pub of the Year by CAMRA in 2011. It was at one time owned by the Charrington Brewery, when it was known as The Welsh Harp; in 1995 the name was abbreviated to just The Harp, before Charrington sold it to Punch Taverns in 1997. It has been owned by the landlady since 2010. The Lamb & Flag in Rose Street has a reputation as the oldest pub in the area, though records are not clear. The first mention of a pub on the site is 1772 (when it was called the Cooper’s Arms – the name changing to Lamb & Flag in 1833); the 1958 brick exterior conceals what may be an early 18th-century frame of a house replacing the original one built in 1638. The pub acquired a reputation for staging bare-knuckle prize fights during the early 19th century when it earned the nickname “Bucket of Blood.” The alleyway beside the pub was the scene of an attack on John Dryden in 1679 by thugs hired by John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester,with whom he had a long-standing conflict. The Salisbury in St. Martin’s Lane was built as part of a six-storey block around 1899 on the site of an earlier pub that had been known under several names, including the Coach & Horses and Ben Caunt’s Head; it is both Grade II listed, and on CAMRA’s National Inventory, due to the quality of the etched and polished glass and the carved woodwork, summed up as “good fin de siècle ensemble.”

Cultural Connections
Covent Garden, and especially the market, have appeared in a number of works. Eliza Doolittle, the central character in George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion, and the musical adaptation by Alan Jay Lerner, My Fair Lady, is a Covent Garden flower seller. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1972 film Frenzy about a Covent Garden fruit vendor, who becomes a serial sex killer, as set in the market where his father had been a wholesale greengrocer. The daily activity of the market was the topic of a 1957 Free Cinema documentary by Lindsay Anderson, Every Day Except Christmas, which won the Grand Prix at the Venice Festival of Shorts and Documentaries.

Posted in British history, buildings and structures, Georgian Era, Living in the Regency, real life tales, Regency era, Regency personalities | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments