Slavery In Islam: Recent Episodes
Podcast: The Queen is not Amus
The year 1843 saw both the publication of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and the issuance of the very first Christmas card. Developed by Sir Henry Cole, a civil servant who not only assisted with the creation of the Penny Post but was also instrumental in management of the Great Exhibition in 1851, the card was an immediate hit with the British populace. It was not so enthusiastically received by the British temperance movement, who objected mightily to its depiction of a child drinking wine along with her parents. However, Cole had started a tradition that continues nearly two centuries later.
The town of Mold in northeast Wales has its own fascinating history dating back to the 11th century reign of William Rufus, but became infamous for its riots in the summer of 1869. Friction between Welsh coal miners and a particularly abusive English mine manager would result in military interference would leave several dead bodies and even more acrimony and hatred. As with all horrific events though, it would also lead to reform of the court system in Wales.
England in the early 19th century was rife with bad harvests, disease, and poverty. Parliament developed the concept of workhouses to assist the poor, by providing them with housing and meaningful work to do. This plan met with varying levels of success, but was mostly disastrous. Worst of all was the Andover Workhouse in Hampshire, where workhouse residents were reduced to seeking food from the decayed rotting bones of farmhouse animals…and perhaps a bone or two from the local graveyard.
The Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas through Egypt and thus provides a quicker shipping route from west to east, was inaugurated in an elaborate, weeks-long ceremony in November of 1869. It was promoted not only as an engineering wonder, but as a means by which permanent international peace and harmony would be achieved. Less than a year later, many of the countries whose monarchs had attended the opening ceremonies would be at war with each other. And Egypt would be completely broke and debt-ridden. And Great Britain would be angling for control of the canal over the French. International peace and harmony, indeed.
Imagine the most pestilent, disease-ridden, rat-infested prison in 19th century Great Britain. Now drop those conditions into a harbor and you have a prison hulk. Only used for about a century, these floating dens of misery were responsible for countless prisoner deaths.
Opened on May 1, 1851, by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the Great Exhibition was the first of the World’s Fair exhibitions of culture and industry. Albert, the Prince Consort, was a major force behind the exhibition, which contained some 100,000 objects, by nearly 14,000 contributors. Britain occupied half the display space inside with exhibits from the home country and the Empire, while France was the largest foreign contributor of objects. Just a few of the displays included the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the electric telegraph, vulcanized rubber, microscopes, barometers, surgical instruments, and even a 27-foot tall Crystal Fountain.
The causes of the Crimean War (1853-1856) were complicated, as they usually are. During the years leading up to the war, France, Russia and Britain were all competing for influence in the Middle East, particularly with Turkey. In addition, Russia was angry with Turkey over the maltreatment of Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, control of access to religious sites in the Holy Land had been a cause of tension between Catholic France and Orthodox Russia for a number of years. When riots occurred in Bethlehem (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in 1853, Tsar Nicholas I blamed the Turks for the many Orthodox monks killed during fighting with French monks. This podcast examines this relatively short but terrible conflict that would give rise to the world’s most famous nurse, Florence Nightingale.
In the 1850’s Sidney & Elizabeth Herbert were the political power couple of their time. Sidney was the Secretary of War during the Crimean War, and Elizabeth was his ardent supporter. Together, they brought forward a young nurse named Florence Nightingale to rescue the Crimean debacle, and the course of nursing was changed forever. Sidney died young, but Elizabeth spent the remaining 50 years of her life as a controversial social figure.
Perhaps the most disastrous theatre fire in Britain’s history occurred in 1887 when Exeter’s Theatre Royal—built to replace another theatre that had burned down just two years earlier—burnt down during an evening performance. Around 200 people were killed and about 100 children were orphaned. Many of the victims were from the city’s poorer areas and had bought reduced price tickets for the second half of the play only. This podcast examines the circumstances behind the fire, as well as the positive safety changes that were made to theatre design after the tragic events of September 5, 1887.