2011 November » Georgian Gentleman

A new Magazine of Natural History, 30th November 1799

Nov 302011

In 1799 the seventy-year old Richard Hall was looking forward to the launch of a new magazine – to give it its correct title “The Naturalist’s pocket magazine, or compleat cabinet of the curiosities and beauties of nature : containing elegant coloured prints of birds, fishes, flowers, insects, quadrupeds, shells and other natural productions, with descriptions”.

It seems to have run to eight volumes containing 429 hand-coloured engravings, covering, as the title implies, just about everything in the flora and fauna line known to man.

Magazine001.jpg New Magazine

Some of the pictures are delightful. The extant magazines tend to have been broken up to make individual coloured prints and these are available for purchase at around £70 each (typically from dealers such as Grey Heron at http://www.greyheronprints.com/. So we see:

A Fennec or Zerda

A Flying Maucauco

A Grunting Ox (I wonder how they differ from the non-grunting variety?)

Some twenty five species of animal native to Australia are mentioned, many of them for the first time. The initial volume came out in 1799, with the remainder following over the next four years.

The Garrulous Roller,

The Green Goldfinch

The Man of War Bird

The Magazine was indeed beautifully illustrated and I imagine that Richard would have considered it sixpence well spent. The images were certainly a far cry from the highly imaginative pictures in the school books Richard encountered as a child, and which I still have, with their unicorns and ape-dogs!

A return visit to the Zong Affair – a massacre on the high seas

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Nov 292011

Because 29th November is the anniversary of one of the most shameful episodes in our maritime and commercial history I make no apology for repeating a post I first made on my posterous site a couple of months back.

Two hundred and thirty years ago in September a heavily laden ship had edged its way out of harbour on the west African coast and headed for the Caribbean. The ship, originally known as Zorg but re-named the Zong after it was captured from the Dutch, was under the command of one Captain Luke Collingwood. The vessel belonged to a group of merchants from Liverpool headed by Messrs Gregson and Chase (both of them former mayors of that city). Over-laden and under-provisioned The Zong sailed for two months. Conditions on board were not helped by the fact that Captain Collingwood managed to get himself and his vessel lost, so the journey was longer than planned. Sickness broke out and seven of the crew died of disease.

But that is just half the picture, because ‘the merchandise’ on board consisted of 442 slaves, manacled and wedged into appalling conditions. 60 of them had died, and of the remainder many were sick, malnourished and liable to die before they could be sold. In any case, they were in such a poor condition that they would not fetch a good price. So on 29 November 1781 the Captain called his crew together and explained that if they did nothing, and allowed ‘the merchandise’ to die on board, the owners would lose money. But if they simply jettisoned the sick they could claim compensation from the insurers at a rate of thirty pounds a head. The justification which the ship’s owners would give to the Insurers was that there was insufficient water and provisions on board to keep the slaves alive.

Slave Ship Zong

And so it was that the crew seized 55 of the sick and callously threw them overboard. The next day a further 42 were drowned. At which point the ship encountered rainy weather, which topped up the reserves of water, but that did not stop the Captain ordering a further 26 sick slaves to be thrown overboard on the first day of December. Another ten slaves broke free and deliberately jumped over the side of the Zong, preferring to take their own lives in an act of defiance rather than allow the crew to make that decision for them. In all 133 people were left to drown (in fact one managed to get back on board) in the name of commercial profit. It was indeed a shameful, horrendous episode, and one which scars our reputation for justice and the Rule of Law.

Because, in the eyes of the law, it was not murder, nor even wrong-doing. The Captain was never even tried for it – the court case which followed the massacre was based upon the claim made by the owners against the insurers, who argued that as the slaves had been killed deliberately, they should not have to pay up. The insurers lost and then appealed, pointing out that far from running out of water the Zong still had 420 gallons of water on board when she finally docked in Jamaica just before Christmas.

Unbelievably, when the case went before the Court of Exchequer Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice said ‘The matter left to the jury was whether it was necessary that the slaves were thrown into the sea, for they had no doubt that the case of slaves was the same as if horses had been thrown overboard.”

The words of the Solicitor General are chilling: “What is this claim that human people have been thrown overboard? This is a case of chattels or goods. Blacks are goods and property; it is madness to accuse these well-serving honourable men of murder. They acted out of necessity and in the most appropriate manner for the cause. The late Captain Collingwood acted in the interest of his ship to protect the safety of his crew. To question the judgement of an experienced well-travelled captain held in the highest regard is one of folly, especially when talking of slaves. The case is the same as if wood had been thrown overboard.”

I have read and re-read those words, of one of the country’s most prominent lawyers of the day, and still find them astonishing. Not just because the slaves were denied all humanity, but because the man who sent them to their death could be held ‘in the highest regard’, not deserving censure of any kind. But then, it is not the first time that the Law appears to have been written to protect those with property, rather than to safeguard the rights of those who do not!

The case provoked an outrage, the starting point of a backlash against the slave trade which resulted, 24 years later, in Parliament banning the trade. It was known not as the’ Zong Massacre’, but as the ‘Zong Affair’, because the law simply did not see the killing as unlawful, merely the right of a captain to decide what he did with his cargo.

JMW Turner Slavers throwing overboard the Dead and Dying — Typhoon coming on (The difference of course is that with the Zong there never was a typhoon coming on…)

Vauxhall Gardens, two hundred and fifty years ago.

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Nov 282011

Vauxhall Gardens

1761, June 11: went with Miss Boswell to Vauxhall Gardens

So Richard recalls his tryst with Miss Boswell – and him a married man! I am sure nothing improper occurred, although the gardens were not without their reputation for those who liked their encounters to be ‘en plein air’!

Vauxhall Gardens so impressed Canaletto when he visited London in the 1750′s that he departed from his usual theme of having either a river or a canal running slap through the middle of every painting and showed a view of the gardens from the Grand Walk, painted in 1751. It shows the Gardens as they would have appeared to Richard just a few years later.

Canaletto View of the Grand Walk, Vauxhall Gardens The Grand Walk at Vauxhall

On John Rocque’s map of London in 1747 the pleasure gardens were shown by their original name of New Spring Gardens. A helpful history of the site over a period of two centuries (the Gardens opened in 1661 and closed in 1859 ) is to be found at the Vauxhall Gardens website at http://www.vauxhallgardens.com/vauxhall_gardens_briefhistory_page.html

The website gives an account of what an evening’s supper consisted of:

“The Vauxhall supper usually took place at around 9 o’clock, as dusk fell. The chief part of the company having seated themselves in the arbours, five hundred separate suppers are served in an instant . . . the price of a bottle of French claret is 5s., of one cold chicken 2s.6d., a quart of cyder 1s., a quart of small beer 4d. a slice of bread 2d. of cheese 4d., and everything else in proportion, which raises an elegant collation to a high rate.

The most famous item on the menu was the legendary Vauxhall ham, cut so thin that you could read a newspaper through it. Besides cold meats, salad, and cheese, the Vauxhall menu also included custards, tarts, cheesecakes and other puddings, mainly to appeal to the younger generation.

During supper, one of the great special effects of Vauxhall was enacted. As night fell a whistle was blown as a signal to a number of servants placed in strategic parts of the garden. Each servant touched a match to pre-installed fuses, and, ‘in an instant’, over a thousand oil lamps were illuminated, bathing the gardens in a warm light that would have been visible for miles around. In the days before electric light, the effect was sensational, and was a constant attraction at the gardens.”

In 1749 a rehearsal of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks in celebration of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, brought 12,000 people to Vauxhall. Most visitors came by water.

Leopold Mozart, proud father of the infant maestro Amadeus, accompanied his son to London in 1764, and wrote of the Gardens: ‘I thought I was in the Elysian fields, with a thousand glass lamps turning night into day.’

Diners would have dined in one of the fifty-odd supper boxes, each large enough to hold a dozen guests. The boxes were decorated with fine paintings, some of which have survived. The Vauxhall Gardens website continues:

“Vauxhall was also famous for its music. The Vauxhall song, which became a recognisable type in the second half of the 18th century, was the first truly popular music in this country. It was the first music to have a real mass audience (of over a hundred thousand each season) drawn from all sectors of society, and from all parts of Britain and overseas.”

So, what we appear to have it as an early version of ‘The Proms’ with ham (albeit wafer-thin) thrown in!

Rowlandson’s take on Vauxhall Gardens dated 1779.The two women in the centre are Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire and her sister. It also features Dr Johnson, James Boswell and Oliver Goldsmith.To the right stands the Prince of Wales.

Boswell had this to say about his visit to the gardens: ‘Vauxhall Gardens is peculiarly adapted to the taste of the English nation; there being a mixture of curious shows, – gay exhibition, musick, vocal and instrumental, not too refined for the general ear; – for all which only a shilling is paid . And, though last, not least, good eating and drinking for those who wish to purchase that regale.’

Above, a Perspective View, and below a General View of Vaux Hall Gardens, from around 1775:

The long case clock (Part Two) – an 18th century masterpiece

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Nov 272011

Long case clock In this way my ancestor Richard Hall noted that his long-case clock, bought in London some eight years previously, had been transported by Mr Endall, wagoner, to his new home in Bourton on the Water.

The clock, a monster at just under nine feet high, was made by Conyers Dunlop, a good clockmaker based in London. He had been apprenticed in 1725, four years before Richard was born, and went on to become Master of the Clockmakers Company in 1758. He made clocks until his death in 1779.

In more recent years the very height of the clock was to become a problem – I remember my mother moved into a ‘Granny flat’ with ceilings around seven feet six inches high. So she had a hole cut in the ceiling to allow an extra six inches (mostlytaken up with finials) to poke up out of view. Still it didn’t fit. A hole was cut in the floorboards and this allowed the clock to drop down between the joists so that visitors were greeted with a weird sight of a ‘sawn-off clock’ emerging from the void and disappearing into the attic!

Only when I had the clock looked at by a professional was I told that the finials were all wrong, had been doctored, and that the original clock was never that tall….

Conyers Dunlop was a fine craftsman. I like the picture of a bracket clock which he made in 1760 and shown on the Anthony Woodburn site at http://www.antique-english-clocks-and-barometers.com/

CONYERS DUNLOP, London, c1760

This is an eight-day clock with an hour strike and a pull quarter-hour repeat, using six bells.

Another bracket clock by the same maker is this one measuring some eighteen inches in height and described as being an eight day clock with a crown-wheel escapement. It is of green chinoiserie lacquerwork.

The back plate is beautifully engraved.

The nearest I can get to a picture of Richard’s longcase clock (sold some ten years ago, unfortunately) is this one:

It is by Conyers Dunlop and is apparently a whopping 99 inches tall! It is described in the auction details at the Woolley & Wallis website at http://woolleywallis.v2.webreality.co.uk/ as ‘a George III mahogany longcase clock, with an 8 day five pillar movement striking on a bell, with a 12 inch arched brass dial having a silvered chapter ring and subsidiary seconds dial’. And since you ask,the auction price for this particular specimen was four grand, probably rather less than the bracket clocks by the same maker (perhaps reflecting the fact that most modern houses simply cannot accommodate such a monster).

Other very helpful information about longcase clocks in the eighteenth century can be found at the website of P. A. Oxley Clocks at www.british-antiqueclocks.com

Visit to the newly opened British Museum in 1760

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Nov 252011

British museum visit

Writing in 1760 my ancestor Richard Hall records in his diary: “October 8 – went with Mr Crouch to see the British Musæum”, He would have been amongst the very first visitors to the museum (it opened on 15th January the previous year) and was based in Montagu House. This seventeenth century mansion house was situated on the current museum’s site and allowed free admission to ‘all studious and curious Persons’.

Well, Richard was certainly both of these, and would have loved what he saw. At its heart the museum housed two huge collections; one being the bequest from Sir Hans Sloane of some 71,000 items (natural curiosities, shells, fossils, books, coins medals and historical artifacts); and the other being the ‘Old Royal Library’ donated by George II (and with it the right to receive a copy of all published books).

Richard’s visit was before the wave of acquisitions of ancient sculptures which marked the Museum’s development in the first half of the nineteenth century, So, no Rosetta Stone, no ‘Elgin Marbles’ but the Museum was already exhibiting its first Egyptian mummy (bequeathed to it in 1759).

Visitors like Richard would have applied in advance for an entrance ticket. It would have entitled him to enter Montagu House at a stated time. Admissions were in small groups, which were escorted, so there would have been no idle roaming of corridors, more an escorted introduction to items of interest.

My guess is that Richard would have been less interested in the books, manuscripts and prints but rather more in the shells and fossils. About this time Richard started his own collections - his shells were mostly cowries brought back from the Indian and Pacific oceans. I still have some of them, ranging from shiny chestnut colours through rose to cream and fawn. They come in all shapes and sizes, some with stripes, some with spots, some plain. Unfortunately the Latin names, which Richard so carefully stuck on, have all become detached and form a pile of anonymous labels at the bottom of a large bread bin which still houses the bulk of the collection. Over the years other family members added their own hoard of objects collected from the beach on family holidays, so now it is almost impossible to distinguish 18th, 19th and 20th century items.

The exceptions are the glowing giant cowries, simply because there is no way they could have been collected within European waters and would have been bought from sailors returning from Far Eastern voyages, or acquired from surplus collections (such as Don Saltero’s – about whom I have written before, and who Richard also visited. He records spending thirteen shillings on that occasion, and since admission to Don Saltero’s was free if you bought a coffee it is fair to assume that the thirteen shillings was spent on acquiring some of the natural curiosities on display there, rather than on buying very expensive coffee! Many of Don Saltero’s items were available for purchase).

Picture (courtesy of Wikipedia) giving some indication of the type of shells which make up Richard’s collection. He also had two golden cowries, still prized in places like Fiji, where they were regarded as status symbols.

Photo: Close-up of a cowrie The golden cowrie – they can grow up to four inches long (Richard’s are half that size).

Richard noted his fossils in a pocket book – the word to him included ‘anything dug upon from the ground’ and hence included emeralds, topaz etc. He jotted down their descriptions and qualities, and often drew them.

Many more details of what Richard did, what he collected, and what he saw, are set out in the Journal of a Georgian Gentleman. Sounds like a pretty good idea for a Christmas present….

Hickory dickory dock – the history of the longcase clock (Part 1)

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Nov 232011

In the Seventeenth Century the longcase clock grew out of the brass ‘chamber clock’ or lantern clock which had a removable wooden hood (it had to be taken off every time the clock was wound up). The introduction of the pendulum, linked to a change from a balance wheel to an anchor escapement, led to much greater accuracy of time-keeping. Early pendulum clocks had to accommodate a swing of 100º which necessitated the use of ‘wings’ at the side of the clock. In time a standard 39 inch pendulum was introduced (known as the royal or seconds pendulum). This swung every second and needed an arc of between 4º and 6º, so clock cases could be narrow, but needed to be long enough to hold the pendulum. In time the cases moved on from being a plain box into being elaborate and beautifully embellished carcasses. In England their style was much influenced by craftsmen from Holland, who came over with William of Orange in 1685.

Early Marquetry longcase clock with bolt and shutter maintaining power, C.1685. In the early years of the 17^th Century the time keeping devices had been known as horologues – the clock was simply the striking mechanism but over the years the term ‘clock’ was applied to the entire mechanism. The terms “grandfather”, “grandmother”, and “granddaughter” have all been applied to longcase clocks. Although there is no specifically defined difference among these terms, the general consensus seems to be that a clock smaller than 5 ft is a granddaughter; over 5 ft is a grandmother; and over 6 ft is a grandfather. Other names are tall-case clock, or floor clock.

Typically these longcase clocks of the latter part of the 17^th Century were adorned with corkscrew or twisted pillars, and the cases were elaborately embellished with marquetry, The wood was usually pine or oak, often blackened to look like ebony, with fruitwood decoration. The early clocks only had an hour hand and there were double circles where the numerals were, dividing the hours into quarters, the half hours being indicated by an ornament of extra length, like an arrow-head or fleur-de-lis. The engraving on clock faces and on the brass plates at the back was highly decorative. Borders, intricate rings about the winding holes, birds and flowers, were all introduced into the decoration, and the spandrels or ornaments at the corners became incredibly ornate. Early dials often had a line of verse in each corner such as one from 1681 bearing the words:

“Behold this hand,
Observe ye motion tip;
Man’s precious hours
Away like these do slip.”

In time verses gave way to angels heads, and cupids, and these made way for the scrolls and rococo designs of the 18^th Century.

Thomas Tompion, known as the ” Father of English watchmaking,” had by 1658 attained much fame and status. He was succeeded by Daniel Quare, who had a shop at St. Martin’s le Grand, London, in 1676. Then came George Graham, an apprentice and protégé of Tompion, and he succeeded to his business in 1713.

The early clocks were thirty-hour mechanisms (i.e. they needed to be wound up once a day, with a six hour lee-way). Then came the eight day clock – much more expensive, and therefore immediately sought after. Eventually month and even one-year clocks were introduced.

By the middle of the 18^th Century mahogany made an appearance, and then swept the board thanks to the efforts of men like Chippendale. Oriental styles were also popular, with lacquered painted decorations on an oak carcass.

An early arch dial, C.1725 with rare date ring to the arch.

The early clocks all had square faces, made of brass. In time more elaborate features – such as phases of the moon, date, silent/chime controls etc – led to an arc being added above the square (particularly after 1710). And then a total change came in – the vogue for painted dials. These started in the 1770s and within thirty years had largely replaced the brass dial. These early dials had simple decorations, such as birds or strawberries. By 1830 small painted scenes, in the corners and arch, were depicted on dials.

An early painted dial C. 1790 with blued diamond steel hands. Throughout the 1800’s the longcases got smaller. The finials disappeared and designs became simpler and less embellished. Manufacture in London slowed down and largely switched to Birmingham and the Midlands, and to Bristol and the West Country. Even worse, the vogue was for clocks with circular faces and hence rounded tops to their cases – a loathsome abomination which to my mind marked the end of the development of the longcase clock!

All the clocks featured here come from P. A. Oxley Antique Clocks. They have an excellent site at www.britishantiqueclocks.com and I am grateful to them for setting out a helpful history of the longcase clock on their site.

The actress Dorothea (or sometimes, Dorothy) Jordan – born 21st November 1761

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Nov 212011

modernfoppery:</p>
<p>earwigbiscuits:</p>
<p>Mrs Jordan, in the character of Hippolyta; mezzotint by John Jones of London, 1791, after a painting by John Hoppner<br />
Dorothea Jordan (1761-1816) was an Irish actress & courtesan, and mistress of the Duke of Clarence. They separated after 20 years and at least 10 illegitimate children. She died in poverty at Saint-Cloud, near Paris, in 1815. He became King William IV of the United Kingdom in 1830, and, having no legitimate heirs when he died 7 years later, was succeeded by his niece, Victoria.</p>
<p>One of my favorite portraits.<br />

250 years ago today saw the birth day of Dorothea Bland in Waterford Ireland. There was little about the circumstances of her birth to suggest that she was marked out for fame and fortune. Her father was a stagehand and her mother was an unmarried actress. To make maters worse, Dad went off and married another actress when Dorothea was very young, and finances were distinctly precarious. With such a stage background it is small wonder that she was to become an actress herself. In this she was aided by a formidable quality – she had a fabulous pair of pins. She was the Betty Grable of the Age. Audiences (well, the male ones) adored her and she quickly became famous, specializing in ‘breeches roles’ where her limbs were displayed to the best advantage (e.g. cross-dressing parts where tight trousers were de riguer and where her charms were not hidden by the voluminous dresses of the day). ‘Jordan’ was her stage name (she never married) but she was also known as Dorothy Phillips.

John Hoppner’s portrait of Dorothea, 1785, pencil & chalk on paper. (Courtesy of the British Embassy in Paris)

She was, shall we say, extremely active romantically. By the age of 20 she had already had a child as a result of an affair with the theatre manager in Cork. A number of other affairs followed, along with three other children. And then she met the Duke of Clarence (later to become William IV)….by whom she had at least ten children (all of whom were given the name FitzClarence). She openly lived with the Duke at Bushy House, attending official engagements as his consort.

A cartoon poking fun at the Royal Family, with Dorothea and her brood in tow, a cartoon by James Gillray.

She was his mistress from 1791 until 1811, so baby-rearing might be thought to have been a full time job. Not at all, she continued to work on the stage throughout their relationship.

Another Gillray cartoon, entitled ‘The Devil to Pay – The Wife Metamorphosed, or Neptune reposing after fording the Jordan.’

The split, when it came, must have been a huge blow to Dorothea, after twenty years of living together as man and wife. The start of the Regency meant that it was imperative that the Duke found an official bride, since he was now next in line to the throne after the Prince of Wales. He cast his mstress aside, and when they split the Duke kept custody of the sons and she was allowed to look after the daughters. In return for promising not to go back on the stage the Duke agreed to pay her an annual sum, but family debts forced her to renege on her promise: the Duke cut off the stipend, and removed their daughters from her care. Facing financial ruin she fled to France in 1815 to avoid her creditors and died the year later, near Paris, in abject poverty.

Jordan-Calls-Cops-For-Paparazzi-Stalker-2

Woops, sorry, wrong ‘actress’ otherwise known as Jordan….

Her children all did rather well for themselves – the daughters marrying viscounts, earls and admirals, while one of the sons became rear-admiral, and another a Lieutenant-General in the British Army.

Dorothea is one of the actresses featured in the National Portrait Gallery exhibition of First Actresses. This by John Hoppner

Dorothea in one of her famous breeches roles in Cibber’s ‘She Would and She Would Not’, where she dresses as a young soldier to follow her lover to Madrid.

So today Dorothea, we remember you and wish you many happy returns of the day. Yours was certainly an eventful (and fecund) life!

20th November 1759, Hawke’s heroic victory at the Battle of Quiberon Bay.

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Nov 202011

1759 thanksgiving

A week after the naval victory over the French at Quiberon Bay, Richard noted the “Day of General Thanksgiving, observed for the great and plentiful harvest, and the train of successes the Lord has been pleased this year to give us over our Enemies in Europe, Asia, Affrica and America”. The Battle of Quiberon Bay was the icing on the cake, rounding off the ‘annus mirabilis’ which saw British forces triumph around the world.

File:Quibcardinaux2.jpg Courtesy of the National Maritime Museum. ‘The Battle of Quiberon Bay’ by Nicholas Pocock, painted in 1812.

Quiberon Bay is situated off the French coast near St Nazaire. The English fleet under Sir Edward Hawke had been attempting to bottle up the French navy in Brest harbour so as to stop any possible invasion plan; a vicious storm had developed, forcing the bulk of the English fleet to run for cover in the Channel, but enough ships remained to see the French attempt to break the blockade under cover of the storm. The English with 24 ships of the line, re-grouped and chased the French into Quiberon Bay, notorious for its shallows and rocky passages. In the teeth of the gale Hawke’s ships cornered the French under the command of Marshal de Conflans. After a battle which lasted for hours in the storm-lashed bay, the English captured, or forced aground, six of the French ships of the line.

Battle of Quiberon Bay, the Day after. Richard Wright, 1760.

Marshal de Conflan’s flagship, the mighty Soleil Royal, was driven onto the shallows, and torched. Two and a half thousand experienced French sailors were killed or captured. Although a number of large French ships escaped they were but a shadow of the original force, and posed little threat to the British navies for the rest of the Seven Years War. The battle was a turning point in the balance of sea power, and so when news of the victory reached London, the Day of Thanksgiving was announced. The clergy took to their pulpits in droves to praise the Lord for helping us trounce our enemies, and Horace Walpole remarked that ”our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories”.

For Richard and the rest of the population it was apparent that the very real threat of invasion by the French was completely finished – it must have been a huge relief. After years of demoralizing news the country had triumphed over the French in every theatre of war. With hindsight it can be said that 1759 marked the occasion when the British Empire eclipsed the French one. And Richard was able to sit down with a sharp pair of scissors, spectacles perched on the end of his nose, and cut out a piece of paper to show the might of Britsh Armed Forces.

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) – say ‘cheese’!

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Nov 182011

Born on 18 November 1787, Daguerre was a French painter and stage designer, who gave his name to the daguerreotype, the first practical and commercially successful photographic process.

Daguerre abandoned his architectural training in 1804, turning to scene painting at the Paris Opéra. In 1822 he developed the diorama, with help from Charles Boulton, and continued to make dioramas for 17 years. The diorama was a large-scale peep show in which a painting on a large translucent screen was seemingly animated by the skilful play of light on each side.

Daguerre used the camera obscura to make sketches for his stage designs and was looking for ways to avoid the tedious and repetitive tracing and copying which this involved. He surmised that it might be possible to achieve this chemically. In 1826 he got wind of the fact that J. N. Niépce was working toward the same end and had made some progress. Letters were exchanged and Niépce revealed to Daguerre his ‘heliograph’ process. In 1829 Daguerre and Niépce formed a partnership to develop the method.

The first commercial daguerreotype camera, from 1839.

Heliography depended on the hardening action of sunlight on bitumen and the subsequent dissolution of the soft shadow parts of the image. Using this method on a glass plate, Niépce had obtained and fixed a photograph from the camera obscura in 1826. He wasn’t satisfied with this – he wanted to fix a visible image on to a photo-engraved plate, from which he could take prints. Experimentation led him to use bitumen on silver-coated copper-plates.

Building on Niépce’s work, Daguerre discovered the light sensitivity of silver iodide in 1831. His problem was to obtain a visible image, but in 1835 he discovered that the image present on a silver iodide plate exposed for just 20 minutes could be developed with mercury vapour. This was a major advance. By removing the unreduced silver iodide with a solution of common salt (1837) he was able to fix the image and make it permanent.

Louis Jacques Daguerre. Untitled (The first daguerreotype, plaster casts on window sill). 1837

The first daguerreotype, 1837, showing plaster casts on a window sill.

Daguerre approached the French Government in January 1839 with details of the process. The government agreed to pay him a pension for life and in return announced that the invention was free to the world. Well, other than in Britain. Here, a patent was taken out on behalf of Daguerre, leading to a period of litigation and stalemate with Fox Talbot who had come up with his own rather different method of recording pictures.

Daguerre was appointed an officer of the legion d’honneur and retired to Bry-sur-Marne in 1840 and died there on July 10, 1851. He had little more to do with the daguerreotype, leaving its improvement to others. It was perhaps the invention which most caught popular fancy in the mid-19th century, when millions of daguerreotypes were sold, but it proved to be a blind alley in the development of modern photography. In the end the Fox Talbot method, involving a negative image and a process whereby an unlimited number of positive copies could be made, was the commercial winner. I still have dozens of daguerreotypes of sturdy aunts and moustachioed uncles, edged in small brass frames and with red velvet covers. Hold the image at the wrong angle and you get a smudged mirror; tilt it correctly and a face from 150 years ago comes hauntingly to life.

So let us put aside mere feelings of national rivalry: happy birthday Louis! You played your part, and helped change the way we see our world.

16th November – remember the salutary tale of Jack Sheppard.

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Nov 162011

Had you been around in London this day in 1724 there is a one in four chance that you would have been in the procession (some two hundred thousand strong) wending its way in a carnival atmosphere towards Tyburn Hill, where the empty gallows were being prepared for a hanging. One in four, because the crowd represented at least a quarter of the capital’s population at the time, and they were all there to ‘honour’ one man: the diminutive Jack Sheppard. Daniel Defoe is presumed to have been hard at work scribbling the final touches to a biography which was on sale ‘hot from the press’ by the time of the execution. And the 22-year-old Jack, his cart escorted by uniformed guards, paused long enough at the City of Oxford Tavern in Oxford Street to sink a pint of sack (sherry), no doubt bemoaning the fact that one of his prison guards had discovered a pen-knife secreted about his person, and thereby scotched his chance of escape. And escaping was what Jack was good at, and why the crowds turned out in their thousands.

For there was no doubt that the baby-faced Jack Sheppard was a thief, and was getting his just rewards from a legal system designed to protect the wealthy. But over and over again he had escaped justice with his daring escapes, and no doubt the throng wanted to see if he could pull off the final escape, the big one, from Death itself. There was to be no such luck, and the lad finally went to meet his Maker this day nearly three centuries ago.

“The Last Scene”engraved by George Cruikshank in 1839, over a hundred years after Sheppard died, to illustrate the serialised novel, Jack Sheppard by William Harrison Ainsworth.

Sheppard had been born in 1702 into abject poverty in the deprived area of Spitalfields: his father died when he was young and his mother had little choice but to send him to the Workhouse when he was six years old. Jack was lucky - eventually he was placed with a draper on The Strand called William Kneebone, as a shop-boy. Kneebone took the lad under his wing, taught him the rudiments of reading and writing and encouraged him to become apprenticed as a carpenter (a seven year indenture, which was signed in 1717 when Jack was 15). His master was Owen Wood, whose premises were in Covent Garden.

All went well for five years – an exemplary pupil, who showed every aptitude for carpentry and hard work. Then, well, he went off the rails. Maybe it was too many visits to The Black Lion off Drury Lane; maybe it was the blandishments of the young whore Elizabeth Lyon (otherwise known as Edgeworth Bess) whom he met there; or maybe it was the company he fell into while frequenting the establishment, and in particular the notorious Joseph ‘Blueskin’ Blake or the duplicitous Jonathan Wild (who styled himself the Thief-Taker General, though in reality he was a thief himself, but one who turned in his acquaintances whenever it was opportune to do so). Whatever the reason, the fact was – young master Jack turned himself to a life of petty crime, and soon there was no way back. For a while it was pilfering – helping himself to odds and ends from people’s houses while on carpentry errands. But by 1723 he had jacked in his apprenticeship, and set up home with Mistress Bess. Naturally she wanted to be spoiled rotten; naturally she was not content with the proceeds of minor shop lifting; she wanted Jack to show her the good life. He turned to burglary ( an offence which carried the death penalty). Mistress Bess was arrested after they had moved to Piccadilly from Fulham: Jack broke in to the jail and rescued her!

Jack and his brother Tom, aided by Bess, embarked on a series of robberies until Tom got caught. The previous year he had also been apprehended (and suffered the painful penalty of being branded on the hand). This time he shopped his brother Jack to save his own skin, and a warrant for Jack’s arrest was issued. Knowing this, and anxious to get his hands on the forty pounds offered as a bounty, Jonathan Wild betrayed Jack to the constables and he was arrested and locked up in the very prison from which he had rescued Elizabeth. Within hours of his incarceration he had cut a hole in the ceiling (leg irons notwithstanding) climbed on to the roof and dropped down to join a crowd who had gathered when news of his escape became known. Diverting attention by announcing that he could ‘see someone on the roof over there’ he calmly shuffled off in the opposite direction…

In May 1724 Jack was arrested for a second time – caught while in the act of lifting a pocket-watch from a gentleman in what is now Leicester Square, and was taken off to Clerkenwell prison, where he was locked up with his mistress. A few days passed while Jack, active with a file, cut through the manacles which chained them both, and then removed one of the iron bars on the prison window. He lowered himself and his buxom Bess down to the street on a knotted bed-sheet (no mean feat given his lack of stature) and off they went into the darkness.

Things escalated – they tried their hand at highway robbery and burglary, stooping so low as to break into the home of his old employer and helper William Kneebone, but the greedy Jonathan Wild was closing the trap. He found Elizabeth Lyon, plied her with alcohol to loosen her tongue, and by this means established where Jack was staying. Again he was arrested, again he was sent to prison (this time to the notorious Newgate), and guess what, he escaped from there as well! On 30th August a warrant for his death was being brought to the prison from Windsor – but by the time it arrived it was discovered that Jack had escaped. Aided and abetted by Bess he had removed one of the window bars, dressed in female clothing brought into prison by his accomplice, and made good his escape via boat up the river to Westminster.

By now he was renowned for his escapades. He was every cockney’s hero, Jack the Lad whom no bars could hold. After all, he hadn’t killed anyone, he was the ultimate cheeky chappy who always got away from the law in the nick of time. Added to that he was good looking in a baby-faced sort of way, young, strong and very agile. This was the stuff of which legends would be made…

Jack lay low for a few days but was soon back to his old tricks, and on 9th September was captured and returned to the condemned cell at Newgate, His fame meant that he was visited by the great and the good – gawpers who wanted to say that they had met Jack Sheppard. All this time he was not just in leg-irons, but chained to iron bolts in the floor of the cell. Cheekily he had demonstrated to his guards his ability to pick the padlocks with a bent nail, and they in turn had increased the security by having him not just hand-cuffed but bound tightly as well. Having trussed him up like a turkey, they retired for the night…. and Jack set to work. He couldn’t get rid of the leg-irons but he could free himself from the other restraints. He managed to break into the chimney, where his pathway was blocked by an iron bar. This he dislodged, using it to break a hole in the ceiling and as a crow bar to open various doors barring his way. At one point he went back to his cell to retrieve his bed clothes, as he needed these to drop down on to the roof of a building next to the prison. He waited until midnight, let himself into the building via the roof, and calmly walked out the front door (still in his leg-irons).

The lad must have had a fair amount of chutzpah, because after lying low for a couple of days he was able to persuade a passer-by that he had been imprisoned elsewhere for failing to maintain an illegitimate son – and would he mind fetching some smithy tools? The passer-by obliged and within a few hours Jack had broken his fetters, and was off to taste a freedom which was to last all of a fortnight. It was at this point that the journalist Daniel Defoe was brought in to pen Jack’s story, which he did anonymously as The History of the Remarkable Life of John Sheppard.

On the night of 29th October Jack Sheppard broke in to a pawnbrokers shop in Drury Lane, helping himself to a smart black silk suit, a silver sword, rings, watches, a peruke wig, and other items. He then hit the town, dressed in style, and passed the next day and a half drinking and whoring. Finally, in a drunken torpor, he was arrested on 1st November, dressed “in a handsome Suit of Black, with a Diamond Ring and a Cornelian ring on his Finger, and a fine Light Tye Peruke”.

Back he was taken to Newgate, imprisoned in an internal room and weighted down with iron chains. His celebrity status meant that he was visited by the rich and famous, and had his portrait painted by James Thornhill, painter to his Majesty King George I.

Jack Sheppard sits for his execution portrait, to be done in oils by Sir James Thornhill. Also shown is one Figg, prizefighter (to Jack’s right); the playwright John Gay (to Jacks’s left); while William Hogarth sketches him on the right.

There was a clamour for his release but the authorities were adamant: Jack must pay the price for his notoriety. And so it was that on 16th November a huge and happy crowd escorted Jack to the gallows, where he did what prisoners were supposed to do – hang. After a quarter of an hour he was cut down, rescued from any attempt by the vivisectionists to claim his body, and buried in the churchyard at St Martin’s-in-the-Fields.

That was the end of Jack Sheppard but not the end of his story. Pamphlets, books and plays were written, all singing the praises of this swash-buckling hero. His name quickly became an icon and his story inspired John Gay to write The Beggar’s Opera in 1728. It was hugely popular. Others piled into print and for the next one hundred years the tales based on Jack’s exploits were legion. It got so bad that at one stage the Lord Chancellor’s office banned the production of any plays containing Jack Sheppard’s name in the title – for over forty years – for fear that it would encourage lawless behaviour.

Courtesy of East London Theatre Authority.

Let us remember Jack Sheppard – a twenty-two year old who went to the gallows for offences which today would merit little more that an ASBO or a Community Service Order. The boy did wrong, but his memory lives on in our collective consciousness, kept alive by every episode of Minder and every tale of Jack the Lad.

A mezzotint engraving, after the Thornhill portrait mentioned above.

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