Hiram Rhodes Revels

On 25 February 1870, Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, was sworn into the United States Senate, and became the first African-American to sit in the United States Congress. He represented the state for two years during the reconstruction period after the Civil War.

Born on 27 September 1827, in North Carolina to a black father and white mother, Revels was educated by a black woman (even though, at this time, the educating of black people was illegal in the state) until 1838, when he was sent to become an apprentice in his brother's barber shop. Unfortunately, his brother died when he was only 14 years old, but he left his assets to Revels, meaning he was able to purchase an education, first at Knox College, Illinois, which had been founded as an anti-slavery establishment, then later at a seminary in Ohio.

Revels was ordained as a minister in the Methodist church, and in the pre-Civil War years, he preached all over the United States, though this was not without its dangers. In Missouri, he was imprisoned for the "crime" of preaching the gospel to African-Americans, though he was fortunate not to be subjected to violence during his time in prison. In 1845, he settled in Maryland where he remained throughout the Civil War. He organized regiments of African-American soldiers for the Union, and even took part in some battles himself.

After the war was over, he moved himself and his wife and five daughters down to Mississippi, where he continued his ministerial work and founded several schools for black children. His work in education led him into politics in the state, where, though he was first reluctant to become involved, soon made him very popular with both black and white people.

When two vacancies appeared in Mississippi's senate seats (one of which was the result of Jefferson Davis, the ex-Confederate President leaving), the state governors wanted to fill one seat which had a tenure of 1870-75 with a white man, and the seat which was due to expire in 1871, with a black man. Revels seemed the natural choice, and he concurred. On 20 January 1870, the Mississippi state legislature voted 85 to 15 in favour of Hiram Rhodes Revels becoming the first black senator in the whole of the United States (if only for one year).

Though he traveled to Washington almost as soon as he had been elected by the Mississippians, Revels had to wait until Mississippi was readmitted to the Union on 23 February before he could join the Senate, and even then, his troubles were not over. Democratic senators tried to argue against him taking his seat, and some even suggested that, under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, he was not eligible to become a senator, despite the fact that neither he nor his parents had ever been slaves. Eventually, they were overruled, with the Senate voting 48 to 8 in favour of allowing Revels to take his seat.

Whilst in the Senate, Revels worked for racial equality, though he was mostly unsuccessful. His campaign to end segregation in schools failed, as did his attempt to nominate a young black man to the US Military Academy. He did however successfully overturn legislation which had previously barred black men from working at the Washington Navy Yard because of their colour. He was also praised for his oratorical abilities, which helped to persuade some of the Senators that black people were as capable as whites in taking roles of high office.

Revels resigned two months before his term was over, and took a job teaching Philosophy at a Mississippi college, where he later became President. He also continued his Ministerial work until his death, on 16 January 1901. Shockingly, there have only been five other African-Americans in the United States Congress since Revels.           

The Missouri Compromise and the dangers of history

On 17 February 1819, the United States Congress passed the Missouri Compromise, an event which led to Civil War and the death of thousands. 

The issue, you see, was the expansion of slavery - each state was allowed to rule whether slavery should be legal or illegal in their territory, and at that moment, the number of slave states and the number of free states was exactly equal. However, there was a lot of unpopulated territory in the country which was perfect for growing cotton, and the anti-slavery Northerners were very worried about Southern plantation owners upping sticks to one of these incredibly fertile areas, growing cotton, using slave power to harvest it and then deciding that they would like to make the area into a state of the United States, with senators and congressmen who voted in favour of slavery. This would obviously upset the balance of slave and free states, leaving the North at a disadvantage. 

They proposed that slavery be made illegal in all new states joining the Union, but this would clearly lead to a massive imbalance against the South, which they felt would be very unfair. So naturally a compromise had to be reached, and it was.

It was decided that Missouri would be brought into the Union as a slave state, but at the same time so would the state of Maine, as a free state, thus maintaining the balance. They then drew a big line across a map of the United States, and said that any state entering the Union below this line was permitted to allow slavery, and all those above, weren't. (They weren't just waving a marker pen about; the line in question was the 36°30' line of latitude so it did have some significance geographically.)

However, though the compromise worked in the early part of the nineteenth century, by the middle it was proving a great hindrance and eventually ended up causing Civil War.

Of course, it didn't. The problem with history is that it's impossible to exactly pin down one cause for a great event - some could feasibly argue that the Missouri Compromise caused Civil War, others might say that it was working just fine until it was scrapped in the 1850s by Senator Douglass, who believed that each state should have the right to vote on whether a state was 'free' or not, and introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act to this effect (it was a nice idea, but led to all out war and violence in Kansas, with pro and anti slavery mobs rioting and sometimes killing each other).

Other causes of the Civil War might include, depending on your viewpoint: Abraham Lincoln's winning of the 1860 election on the Republican Party ticket; the huge chasm between Southern and Northern values; slavery itself; the fact that slavery was not outlawed in the whole country when the slave trade was; the Dred Scott court case and its ramifications or even, looking at the very short term, the fact that the Southern states seceded, formed the Confederate States of America and opened fire at Fort Sumter on Northern troops.

A good case could be made for all of those examples being the sole reason for war, but as usual in history, they acted together, and it was only a culmination of all the events which eventually caused war. It is possible, of course, to argue that a certain event was more significant that another event, but it is very, very rare that one person can categorically state that X and X alone was responsible for the American Civil War, or the Reformation, or the decision to give women the vote or whatever. 

This is why I love my subject. You can never be wrong (well, you could if you were to argue that Winston Churchill was the cause of the American Civil War, but very few people try to do this, oddly enough...), and you can argue (read: waffle) your way out of, or into any situation. But seriously, you do learn how to prioritize arguments; review the most important causes of any given event; and critically analyze primary and secondary sources as evidence for and against a particular line of thinking, all very important skills. Which is why the government's proposals for a shake up of the history curriculum are especially worrying; focusing as they do on just one form of history - the 'Britain and the Empire were excellent' one. Michael Gove should realize that just because he learnt it in should, doesn't make it true. If he was a proper student of history, he would know this already...      

Juxtaposition

I'd like to take a break from identifying cell organelles (yeah!...) to talk about the marvelously ironic country that is the United States of America. Flipping through the Wikipedia article on 31 January, you will discover that, on this day in 1865, the "United States Congress passes the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing slavery", yet on this day in 1876, a mere eleven years later, the country "orders all Native Americans to move into reservations". Huh.

America is a very interesting country. It's only been officially independent since 1776, yet in that relatively short time, it has risen to become the world's greatest superpower. (You could argue for days, I am sure, as to whether this is a title it retains, but it is very true to say that it was the dominant world power for almost all of the twentieth century.) A melting pot of many, many different races and religions, and containing immigrants who often arrived incredibly poor, America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had the potential to completely fail as a democracy, simply because of its diversity. From some countries, you had Catholics escaping persecution, other countries, Protestants and others still Jewish (and that's just counting the major European religions), yet these incredibly different groups of people managed to exist side by side once they were in America.

The sheer size of the country probably had something to do with this. There was enough room, if you so required, to pack up and move thousands of miles away from the people who were annoying you, and still be assured of land and space to call your own when you arrived there, unlike in the highly overcrowded European nations. Often, new states sprung up where people of the same religion congregated - Pennsylvania, for example, was founded (first as a colony, then later as a state) by William Penn, a very prominent Quaker leader, and the religion dominated the state's governance for decades; Utah was founded by Brigham Young, a leading Mormon and has retained that connection to the Mormon religion to this day.

Though there were instances of segregation such as these, there are other examples of many different nationalities and creeds living side by side. New York, for example, had a very diverse population simply because it was home to the largest immigration center in the country; California after 1848 had an equally diverse population because of the myriad prospectors arriving from all over the world hoping to try their luck in the gold rush.

This is not to say that the US was not without its problems. Slavery was not formally banned in the country until 1865, whereas most European countries had banned it much earlier in the century (Britain, for example had banned in 1833). Even after this point, treatment of black people, particularly in the Southern states, was often terrible - the so-called 'Jim Crow' laws continued right into the twentieth century, and the Civil Rights Movement was still (understandably) very active until over a century later, when ethnic minorities were finally granted equal rights.

Their treatment of the Native Americans was equally despicable - the forcible moving to reservations of the peoples was just the beginning of the end, with many "savages" having been treated as second class citizens since Europeans had first started coming over to the country. 

Women and other ethnic minorities were also often treated poorly, though in some cases, this was not much different to the rest of the world. Irish and Chinese immigrants were often little better than slaves, as they worked in highly dangerous occupations such as mining or building railways for an incredibly small wage, and no rights to protest, but, sadly, this was pretty much the same as the rest of the world. Though some states allowed women to vote in the late nineteenth century, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution (which allowed universal women's suffrage) was passed in 1919, very comparable to most European countries. 

Obviously, the country was not perfect at all, particularly in their treatment of ethnic minorities, but it is truly remarkable that it was able to become such a dominant world power in so little time. They have often been held up as a bastion of democracy, and though clearly there are examples which can be found that illustrate that this was most definitely not true, there are plenty more examples to show that it is. Not for nothing do we still hold true the idea of the "American dream" - that a penniless man could come to the country, escape the rigid class systems of Europe, and make himself a millionaire. Naturally, these situations were very rare, but they did occasionally happen. Social class was much more fluid in eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century  America than it was anywhere else.

It will be interesting to observe what direction the United States takes over the next few decades. Once a model of democracy, the right-wing Tea Partiers, such as Sarah Palin seem to be having more and more influence on life there - the recent shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the other innocent victims is directly attributable to the violent rhetoric that is more and more forthcoming from certain political leaders; and the new Republican congress wants to restrict abortion still further, even going as far as redefining rape (you can be 'forcibly raped' or 'not really raped it was just a bit of harmless fun and who says a woman should be conscious during sex anyway') as if women who have been attacked haven't been through enough. Ironically, we may see, in a few decades time, the Middle Eastern countries that the US has been determined to invade in order to bring democracy to, actually being more democratic and allowing women more rights than America itself.

But who knows? I am a historian, not a fortune teller, after all.     

Proud & Prejudiced: Female writers in the early nineteenth century

For Christmas, my lovely friend Christina got me a copy of the novel Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. I've never read it, nor indeed any other of Austen's works, and I haven't seen any of the film or TV adaptations of it either, but the copy she bought me is an absolutely beautiful book (look! It has swans on! Or at least, I think they're swans... And it's gold! What's not to love?!) and Christina insisted that I simply had to read it because it would revolutionize the way I looked at love and I figured that since so so many people rave on about it, it can't be all that bad, so I'm reading it. And it is pretty interesting. 

It's not the first thing I would have picked up in a bookshop, so I'm glad it was given to me because there isn't much chance I'd have read it otherwise, and it's actually quite good. For something that was written at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it's still very readable, and the love story itself (yeah, I'm yet to finish it, but I'm pretty sure of exactly who is going to end up betrothed to whom...) is a fairly timeless one.

By which I mean to say, 'Thank you very much for this gift Christina, I'm actually enjoying it'. But I'm not an English student thank God not that they aren't completely lovely people; I just loathe most poetry and I have no idea how to analyse a text, so I couldn't tell you about the writing styles and the hidden metaphors and whatever else it is that write-y people bang on about. Not that you would want to read my analysis of a half-read book anyway. No, I'd much rather talk about the book's author, Jane Austen herself, as today in 1813 was the day the book I've been rambling on about was first published.

There are books and website a-plenty out there about her, so I'm not going to waste time filling you in on facts about her birth, death or daily life - instead, I'm going to attempt to put her writing into context: how, as a woman in the early nineteenth century, did you get published?

With great difficulty, it appears. Pride and Prejudice was not Austen's first published novel, and had in fact been a work in progress for many years prior to it's publishing, but when it finally went to print in 1813, it did so anonymously and only after Austen's brother, Henry, had persuaded Thomas Egerton to publish the novel. Her books, once published, remained steady sellers; they were often reviewed favourably and were fashionable amongst the elite aristocracy of the early nineteenth century, but despite this success, Austen was not persuaded to 'come out' as the author of the books, and when she died, in 1817, her achievements as a writer were not mentioned at her funeral, though the 'extraordinary endowments' of her mind were.

Austen was not the only female author in the nineteenth century and beyond to hide behind a veil. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, which was first published a year after Austen's death in 1818, had the first few editions of her book published anonymously; Charlotte Bronte wrote under two pen names - Lord Charles Albert Florian Wellesley and Currer Bell,  the name which appears on early versions of her most famous novel, Jane Eyre. 

It wasn't until much later in the nineteenth century that authors such as Louisa May Alcott were able to print under their own names as men were - Little Women was published in 1868. Though Alcott herself was a passionate advocate of women's suffrage - she was the first woman to register to vote in the state of Massachusetts - there are some schools of thought which say that she was only published because her novels were deemed 'mere' women's books. Her semi-autobiographical stories were seen as fairly trivial, and not radical enough to be threatening to most men, who in the nineteenth century, and beyond had a firm idea of where women 'belonged' - and it was not in the publishing house. 

Clearly, this is not something I agree with at all, but I can at least understand where most of these men were coming from. They had been brought up in an incredibly patriarchal society, which firmly believed that women should not be involved in business of any description - some even believed that educating women beyond the basic skills needed to write letters or perhaps speak a little French was too much. They were a product of the society they had been brought up in; it took a World War and the womens' suffrage movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to show them how wrong they had been in their ideas, and fortunately for us today, there would be no need for a female author to publish anonymously or under a male pseudonym, because we no longer live in such a sexist society.

Except, a few years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I remember listening to a radio interview with a female author, who was asked why she had used a pseudonym (of sorts) to publish her (very well selling, and well written) books under. The author replied that she had been advised that publishing her stories, which had been written to appeal to neither boys nor girls specifically, under her obviously female name might turn boys off reading the books - young boys wouldn't want to been seen reading a book written by an (eurgh!) GIRL. Her publishing house advised her that she should at least attempt to make her name less obviously feminine, in order to appeal to a male fanbase. 

So she did, choosing to publish using her first initials and surname - 'J' and 'K' and 'Rowling'. It's such a remarkably progressive society we live in.     

Unscrew the stars

Today marks the 163rd deathday of Caroline Herschel, who was possibly one of the most extraordinary women I have ever come across. Deemed by her own parents 'too ugly to be married', the middle-class girl grew up in Hanover, Germany, ensured that she was well-educated and used her spinsterhood to her advantage - the time she would have spent caring for her husband and any children they may have had was spent studying space, and she eventually ended up being more famous than her brother William, also a keen astronomer. She produced two astronomical catalogs which are still in use today, and on top of all this, was a professionally-trained soprano, despite being a mere four foot three inches in height. Basically, she's another woman who makes me feel hopelessly inadequate, hoorah!

Caroline Herschel, 16/03/1750 - 09/01/1848

Herschel was one of six children born to Isaac and Anna Ilse Herschel, a middle-class couple from Hanover, Germany. Isaac was a keen musician, and took a job as a bandsman in the Prussian Army, encouraging his children - including Caroline - to become well-educated not just in the sciences and maths, but also in music. However, in 1760 when she was 10, she contracted typhus, a disease which left her growth stunted (she never grew taller than 4'3") and her body physically deformed. Her own father believed that she was too ugly to ever marry, and her mother discouraged her education after this point, believing that she would be more suited to becoming a house servant, which she did from the time of her father's death in 1767, until 1772, when she accepted an invitation from her brother to go and live with him in England.

Because the King of England (George II) was from Hanover, the two countries were united, and the citizens of Hanover were granted dual-citizenship, so William Herschel (Caroline's brother, who was 12 years older than her) had moved to England in 1766, he had found it easy to set up a house in Bath, from where he taught music and organised various concerts. When she arrived, William tutored her in singing, and she became such a good singer that she was the principle soprano of many of the concerts her brother organised, and was even offered a job as a singer in Birmingham, though she declined this.

Despite being talented musicians, both the Herschels' real passions lay in the field of astronomy. William not only enjoyed spending nights looking through telescopes at the stars, but also making his own telescopes. It was Caroline, however, who ultimately proved better than her brother at crafting the instruments - she possessed incredible dexterity and patience and was willing to spend many hours making the devices. As well as this, she taught herself how to properly record the observations her brother made in the style that the key astronomers of the day used. As this work was fairly mundane, her brother encouraged her to start using the telescopes herself, and during the 1780s and 1790s, she discovered many comets, becoming the first woman to do so. 

In 1781, William discovered the planet Uranus (though he initially believed it to be a comet) and was invited to name his discovery. His initial choice of 'George' in honour of the King was overruled in favour of 'Uranus' (after the Greek god of the sky, Ouranos - making it the only planet whose name comes from Greek mythology), but the King was clearly flattered enough to offer him the position of chief astronomer to the royal family. A few years later, in 1787, Caroline was awarded £50 per year by the King to work as William's assistant - an important milestone, as it marked the first time a woman was paid for scientific work.

When William married in 1788, the amount of work he did reduced, but Caroline's output increased, as her brother's wife was able to take over the general running of the household, freeing up more of her time to study space. As well as continuing to discover comets and nebulae, she produced the Catalogue of Stars - a rather dull, but incredibly useful piece of work. With stars being discovered left, right and centre, it was often impossible to tell if your 'new' star had already been spotted by someone a few years ago, especially as the previous catalogue that had been used to confirm new discoveries was many years old. In 1798, the Royal Society published her new catalogue, which contained all the stars from the previous list, with erroneous recordings removed, as well as 560 new stars. 

After William's death in 1822, Caroline returned to Hanover, though she continued to correspond with her brother's son, John, who was also a prominent scientist. In 1828, she was awarded the Gold Medal for Science by the Royal Society (the first of many awards); the next woman to be awarded the medal was Vera Rubin in 1996. She herself died in 1848, aged 97, and though it was true that she never married as her parents predicted, it was because of this that she was able to become one of the very first female scientists to gain international recognition for her work.    

War of Dried Fruit...oh wait

I am not the best person in the world at spelling, and rely heavily on computerized spellcheckers to ensure that my work is not riddled with errors. So when I read that on 4 January, 1903, Topsy the elephant was killed in the War of Currents, I immediately envisaged a couple of sultanas bravely facing an onslaught by a handful of raisins. In my defense, I should like to point out that the idea of AC and DC currents going to war with each other is just as nonsensical as dried fruit fighting (though in the interests of balance, fairness and embarrassing myself, I should point out that it was only after reading that Topsy was killed by Thomas Edison, via electrocution that it dawned on me that this particular war may have more to do with currents than currants...).

So let's dive right in to battle, shall we? The war of currents (sometimes known as the 'war of the currents', because Historians are crazy and wild like that), began in the late 1880s, when alternating current (AC) was invented and decided to go to war with direct current (DC).

When Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb, he used the electricity created by DC to make it work. DC works by having a constant current flowing through a wire in a similar manner to the way water flows through a pipe - how much water you have in your bucket (lightbulb) at the end depends on how fast the water flows through the pipe and how long it's been flowing for. In terms of electricity, this worked really well if you had a light switch on the wall and a lamp a few metres away that you wished to light. You could even share your electricity source with your neighbours, and they could have light too! It was all rather jolly.

There were, however, some significant problems with the system. If you wished to transfer power from its source at the power station to your home, you would need metallic cables which conducted electricity to do so. However, it took a lot of volts to light a bulb, and do the other things electricity was used for, and DC cannot be altered - if you need a high voltage at the end, you have to have a high voltage at the start, and keep that voltage high whilst the electricity travels to its end point. This proved slightly problematic, as if the current had to flow for distances greater than a mile, the wires would get so hot (due to the wasted heat energy being produced) that they would often melt and stop working. 

Edison's solution was to install lots of wires which ran over shorter distances (leading one observer to point out that this left the city of New York looking like a spider's web) but this proved dangerous, as during high winds or severe snowstorms, common in autumn and winter months, the wires would fall, electrocuting the people stood below them. In a particularly severe three day storm in March 1888, around four hundred people were killed this way. It was clear that the system couldn't continue for much longer.

Luckily, a very clever scientist named Nickola Tesla invented Alternating Current (by methods that, if I attempted to explain them, would result in my brain leaking out of my ears, so please just take my word on this one). AC, as the name suggests, alternates - sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's negative. For example, if an alternating current of 50 volts were to be measured using a oscilloscope (a fancy voltmeter), it would produce a sine wave that started at 0 volts, went up to 50, came back down to 0, went even further down to -50, came back up to 0, then further up to 50 again, and so on. 

Whilst this was very interesting to scientists, the main benefit that AC has to us all is that this enables it to be transformed - which basically means it starts off at a very high voltage at the power station, before immediately going through a transformer, which uses magic physics to lower the voltage significantly, but not the power produced from it, which means that the cables no longer heated up and melted, and power could be sent over huge distances. It was clear to everyone that this was a Jolly Good Thing Indeed, and preparations were made to switch over to AC, so that hundreds of lives could be saved, as well as many, many miles of copper cables.

Edison, however, had other ideas. He had patented the DC system, as was busy making huge amounts of money off it. He knew, though, that Tesla's invention was much better, and would soon make his old system obsolete, and therefore did everything in his power to discredit it. He claimed that it was a terribly dangerous thing - "a torrent rushing violently over a precipice" - and electrocuted animals with it to demonstrate its great danger, which is where the story of Topsy the elephant comes in.

(This is actually a really sorry tale - it made me weep, but then, anything to do with animals dying will do that... Topsy was an elephant who was kept in a zoo to perform for people, but by 1903 she had killed three men - one of whom had tried to force a lit cigarette down her throat. For this reason, she was deemed too dangerous to live, and was electrocuted using 6,600 volts of AC  by Edison, in an effort to demonstrate its dangers. He even filmed the event, and the footage is available on Wikipedia if you want to view it, but please don't - it's quite distressing...)

Tesla took the admirable stance of not saying anything derogatory about his rival and using just his own invention to prove how it was the best one to be used to provide electricity for the country. In 1897, the organizer of the Chicago World Fair asked Edison to supply the electrics for the event, and Edison agreed, requesting $1,000,000 to cover the costs of cables. Tesla approached the organizer, saying he could do it for half the price, and managed this feat. Edison was so annoyed that he banned Tesla and his sponsors from buying lightbulbs which he had patented. 

The damage to Edison's invention had been done, however. Once people saw that Tesla's alternating current was much cheaper and safer than using direct current, the switch was made, and within 10 years of the Chicago World Fair, 80% of American electricity was produced using AC. 

Which is all terribly interesting, but I'm a bit disappointed at the lack of dried fruit pummeling each other...         

Christmas Traditions

So where do all our modern Christmas traditions come from? Cards, trees, crackers - when did they become a staple of Christmas? For most of them, we can blame the Victorians. Victorian Britain was the superpower of the nineteenth century - France was still recovering from the Revolution and Napoleonic Conflicts; Russia were (mostly) content to keep themselves to themselves; the Prussian states did not start to become dominant until the latter half of the century and the Hapsburg Empire, consisting of Austria, Hungary and the other Eastern European countries, did not have the superior naval power of the British, which meant that they were unable to conquer other countries. 

It was this that gave the British their edge. The new Empire, consisting mostly of African and Asian countries, meant that a number of people became very, very rich, and a new middle class sprung up, of people who benefited indirectly from the wealth which inevitably comes to some when countries are taken over and money is redistributed (usually away from those who need it most and towards those who need it least).

Obviously, there were massive inequalities in Britain still - as well as the "underclass" made up of the natives of the various colonized countries, there were still some very poor people living in Britain itself - both in rural areas and in the back to back housing of inner cities. The middle and upper classes, therefore, wanted to distance themselves from these people, buy spending as much money as possible in the most obvious ways, and (rather sadly, I think) it is from this that we get most of our Christmas traditions today.

Christmas Trees:
Most people know the "story" of how Prince Albert introduced the Christmas tree to the British when he married Queen Victoria and came over from Germany, but this isn't entirely true. Trees had been a staple part of the Christmas celebrations in the Hapsburg Empire since as early as 1605, but actually arrived in Britain before 1840, as most people believe. Queen Victoria saw Christmas trees displayed at Kensington Palace in 1832, before she in fact became Queen, and in 1800, Queen Charlotte, the German born wife of George III had a tree put up for the Christmas Day party she hosted at Windsor.  

 

Christmas Decorations:

Electric lights for Christmas trees were invented in America, rather than Britain, in 1882, by Edward H. Johnson, who was a close friend of Thomas Edison (who had invented the light bulb three years earlier). Earlier in the century, candles had been hung on the trees, in protective metal casing to prevent things celebrations getting too heated, literally. Tinsel was imported from Germany, and trees were also decorated with glass baubles, ornaments made of silver wire, strings of beads and crocheted snowflakes, stars and angels. As ever, size was deemed the most important thing in the celebration, and anyone who was anyone made sure that their tree was large enough to have both ornamental decorations and gifts hanging from it. Gifts were also stacked under the tree, of course having been delivered by...

Father Christmas:

The tradition of hanging up a stocking came from Holland, and began in the seventeenth century, on 5 December, when children would fill their shoes with food for both St. Nicholas (whose night they were celebrating) and his horses. In return, Nick would fill their shoes with gifts (or coal, if you'd been really bad) and the tradition of Sinterklaas was born. It really took off in nineteenth century America, then back in Britain, where Santa Claus was established as a kindly, bearded old man bearing a sack of presents. Interestingly, Father Christmas was originally dressed in green, but became red in the 1930s, after a strong advertising campaign from a certain soft drinks company. 

Thomas Nast's famous 1863 portrait of Santa Claus

Christmas Cards:

Christmas cards were the brainchild of Sir Henry Cole in 1843, who was said to be inspired by the Christmas Pieces children would write at school and take home for their parents. He used a design by J.C. Horsley, which depicted a family at Christmastime, and had a banner underneath which read 'A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year to you'. Only about a thousand cards were sold in the first year, but by 1880, the volume of cards was so great that the post office had to ask people to post early for Christmas. 
 

Other Traditions:
 

Crackers (as in the ones you have at the beginning of a 3294023 course Christmas meal, rather than at the end) were invented by Tom Smith in the mid nineteenth century. He was a confectioner who had the bright idea that he could sell his sweets for two or three times the price if they were rapped in a twist of brightly coloured paper, which also contained a printed riddle. It is said that he was inspired to add the 'bang' after sitting in front of a crackling fire. In the words of his advertisement for them, they 'combine art with amusement and fun with refinement', which doesn't explain at all who's daft idea it was to put those annoying hats in, which only end up confusing me...
 

The Queen's speech originated in 1932, and was the King's sech then - broadcast by George V to the people of Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
 

Brussels sprouts are an abomination and should not be considered a Christmas tradition at all. 

The Christmas...Orgy?!

Sometimes, when I'm writing these little bloggy things, I have to check what day it is because I'm a bit disorganized, and enjoy asking Mr. Google questions. In December, however, this is not an issue at all, because I have an advent calender, which tells me the day and gives me chocolate. If this was the only thing that made Christmas a special holiday, I'd still love it... So, in honour of my feeling particularly festive as a result of having a little piece of chocolate to eat (God, I'm easy to please...), here is part one of a History of Christmas:

300 years Before Christ, or Before the Common Era if you'd prefer, if you happened to be in Persia towards the end of December you would find the people dancing around bonfires, paying homage to Mithras, God of light and guardian against evil. This festival was absorbed into the Roman Empire, becoming Dies Natali Invicti Solis, or the birthday of the unconquered Sun and later the festival of Saturnalia.

Saturnalia actually sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. As you may have guessed, it was both named after and a celebration of the Roman God Saturn, who was the God of Plenty. Festivities began around the solstice, and lasted seven days. To participate, you would have had to partake in the usual excess drinking and eating we have come to associate with Christmas, but the Romans had an interesting twist - the festival also involved inverting many social norms (such as men dressing up as women and vice versa, and masters waiting on servants) and allowing normally forbidden pastimes (including gambling and sex 'in groups' according to the Readers' Digest...so it was basically an orgy?!). Interestingly, they also decorated their homes with evergreens - the first (recorded) people to do so. 

At the same time, the Celtic tribes of northern Europe celebrated Yule, a festival similarly marked by indulgent eating and drinking, and the exchanging of gifts (for those who could afford it). They also decorated their homes with evergreens, and added holly, ivy and mistletoe, which symbolized extreme danger from Nargles renewal and everlasting life. Fires were lit, from which comes the tradition of burning a large Yule Log.

During the Dark Ages, the Christian Church started to have a much stronger grip on western Europe, especially in Britain. Whilst allowing the pagan faith to continue in any form was generally frowned upon, an exception was made for Christmas (though the tale of small children wandering around in dressing gowns and tea towels the birth of the Son of Christ was obviously pushed to the forefront of the celebrations, instead of old rituals involving fires and sacred plants). In 567, the Church declared the 12 days between the Nativity and Epiphany a sacred season, and by the time of the Norman Conquest, this period had become Britain's main holiday.

The Christmas celebrations remained largely unchanged for the next 500 odd years, with the exception of the banning of Christmas in 1647 (yes, this isn't just a myth). It was not, as is commonly claimed, Oliver Cromwell alone who banned the festival, but the New Model Army (of which he was one of the chief officers, admittedly), which was made up of extremely zealous Puritans who believed that Jesus would absolutely not be coming again until the country was sorted out and the people stopped behaving like such wanton harlots. The Major Generals (the top officers of the Army) decreed that only the Sabbath should be a day of rest, and the only national holiday should be 5 November, to celebrate its freedom from papist despotism.

What they didn't factor in was the public's reaction to this. People decorated the streets with holly and mistletoe, shopkeepers openly defied the demands to open their stores on Christmas Day. In Kent, an armed rebellion took place, most of which was quickly put down, but over 3,000 rebels held out behind the old Roman walls in Colchester for several months afterward. Though the Puritan reforms continued throughout the country, the banning of Christmas was quietly dropped for the following years.

What we today would recognise as 'Christmas' descended from the Victorian, C19th era where it was seen as an opportunity to embellish commercial interests. Most of our "traditions" either stem from this point or were revived by the middle and upper classes, eager to show off their great wealth and benefit themselves only, which is capitalism at it's absolute worst...but does give us beautifully festive scenes such as the one above, and The Nutcracker, so I think I might find it in my heart to forgive them a little bit...

[Part Two to follow.]   

Not on your Nellie

I haven't written much on my favourite topic - the horrendousness of our terribly patriarchal society - recently, and I think it's definitely time I started being more aggressively feminist, and what better way to do so than by talking about Nellie Bly, who, on 14 November 1889, began a round the world trip which she intended to complete in 80 days (like the book goes...) but actually manage in 72. She did many other pretty amazing things, too, and is my new Person I Want To Be When I Grow Up Which Technically I Have Now Because I'm 18 But I Still Don't Feel Very Accomplished Or Adult. 

Anyway. Yes. Nellie Bly...

Nellie was born Elizabeth Jane Cochran on 5 May, 1864, to a wealthy family in Pennsylvania. Her father, an entrepreneur, died when she was six, leaving her mother with fifteen children to raise. Poor old Mary Cochran didn't have it easy - she remarried, but had to sue for divorce when Nellie was 14. She herself testified in court against her stepfather, whom she insisted was drunken and violent, which may have been the basis for her strong feminist principles. 

She wasn't an exceptional school pupil - she even dropped out of boarding school after just one term - but was hired by the Pittsburgh Dispatch when she was 21, after writing a furious letter to the editor in response to a piece about women only being good for housework and taking care of children. Changing her name to Nellie Bly, she soon took up a position at the paper, writing exposés on the appaling conditions in local factories, which employed very young children and had terrible mortality rates.

The problem with this was, most advertising space in the paper was brought by the owners of said factories, who weren't best pleased with seeing their businesses slandered (even if what Bly was writing was true). She was therefore relegated to writing about "women's events" covering such fascinating topics as housework, gardening and child rearing. Clearly dissatisfied with this turn of events, Bly moved to Mexico and became the paper's foreign correspondent.

Again, this worked well for six months until the Mexican government (at the time, a dictatorship) got wind of what she was writing about (for example, an article protesting against the imprisonment of a Mexican journalist who had been criticizing the government) and ran her out of the country, where she continued to write about them in a derogatory fashion, but this time without fear of arrest. After a while though, she was shunted to the theatre and arts section, which she found somewhat unsatisfying, so moved to New York City to see what work she could gain there.

Four months later, with not a penny to her name, she walked into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer, and talked her way into a job at the New York World. Her first assignment was to be an undercover report into the conditions of the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. There had been reports of brutality and horrendous conditions there, so Bly agreed to fake insanity and spend ten days there to see what really went on.

There were many things which could you get classed as insane in the nineteenth century (and even the first half of the twentieth century) if you were a female. Having an eating disorder, protesting as a suffragist, cheating on your husband, having a baby out of wedlock or even having showing too much interest and enjoyment in sex made you crazy, in the view of society but Nellie chose instead to spend a night practicing crazy faces in the mirror (well, who doesn't?!) and walk into a local workhouse, pretending to have amnesia. Doctors quickly declared her insane, and she was taken away to the Asylum.

The conditions she reported were atrocious. The water the patients were given to drink was dirty; the food consisted of gruel broth and spoiled beef; the women were expected to sit for many hours a day on uncomfortable wooden benches with nothing to do; the wards were unclean; 'dangerous' patients were tied together with rope; women were woken by having freezing cold water thrown over their heads and the nurses were physically abusive to their patients. 

Of course, this all proved to be very embarrassing for the Asylum when Bly was released at The World's behest - a grand jury was opened to examine the claims she put forward in her report which resulted in an annual extra $850,000 for care of the insane.

At this point, Bly had achieved nation fame and could have retired from public view, but she continued ever onwards in her quest to break boundaries for women. After spending a couple of years pioneering investigative journalism by writing about the terrible housing and labour conditions in New York (at a time when there were still very, very few female journalists, most  of whom were writing the gardening or crocheting columns), she suggested turning the fictional Around the World in 80 Days into fact, an idea that was very well received by her editor. At 9:40am on 14 November 1889, she began her journey, which The World covered and introduced a competition which called for members of the public to guess when she would arrive back in the United States (the winners were awarded an all expenses paid holiday to Europe). Bly completed her journey in a record breaking 72 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes and 14 seconds - a very respectable time in which to cover 24,899 miles without flight.

She then retired from journalism, marrying businessman Robert Seaman (40 years her senior) in 1895. When he died in 1904, she took over the running of his companies and not only patented a design for the 55 gallon oil drum (which is still in use in America today and earned her a fortune) but also introduced a series of reforms for the workers which included supplying them with essentials such as health care and luxuries such as access to gyms and libraries.

As if she hadn't already done enough with her life, Bly traveled to the Eastern Front of the First World War (she had been on holiday in Europe when the war broke out) and reported the war for the New York Evening Journal. She survived the war unscathed, but died four years after it ended, of pneumonia, aged 57. Frankly, I think it's likely that she packed more into one day than I have done in my whole life, and I'm pretty exhausted having just written all that. I also think that school History curricula should be modified to include more feminists like Nellie Bly, who made a real difference to many people's lives, rather than 'powerful' female members of the aristocracy, such as Queen Victoria or Marie Antoinette, who were little more than puppets, doing what men commanded them to, but sadly I think that's unlikely to happen...

A Night at the Opera

Nineteenth century America was the land of dreams, full of opportunity and hope. A poor European could go out there, with no money to his name other than that which he used to pay for his boat fare, land in New York after an arduous few weeks' traveling and within a generation or so, be a millionaire. He could have gone out to California, or the Black Hills during one of the gold rushes and struck lucky (very, very lucky - it was rare for anyone to make any money from gold panning, but those who did often became very, very rich), or gone out to the mid west and made a fortune farming, or inventing a new farming tool (and giving it a fabulous name - the sod-buster, anyone?!) that everyone needed, or maybe started a new business in one of the industrial east coast cities.

Sadly, most immigrants weren't this lucky. Most arrived poor and stayed poor, but there were just enough who did manage to turn themselves into millionaires that the dream was kept alive. Not everyone was happy about this, though. High society was full of snobs - the old New York families were appalled by the uncouth nouveau riche who had money, but none of the 'proper' airs and graces and took every opportunity they could to snub the upstarts. Of course, one had to be obvious about one's snubbing, if it was to have the desired effect. It was no use merely tittering about those new families, with diamonds on their fingers but dirt under their fingernails, amongst one's group of friends - one had to make a point.

An easy, but dreadfully cutting, way to do so would be to refuse the new families - the Vanderbilts, or the Goulds, for example - a box at the opera. This did more than deny them a chance to watch the latest performances of a Mozart or Verdi extravaganza. In certain circles during the late nineteenth century, the opera was the place to be of an evening. Where else but at the Academy of Music could formidable matriarchs find out the latest scandalous gossip; elderly gentlemen have a gentle snooze after one to many glasses of scotch in the interval or the new debutantes coyly flutter their lashes and drop their fans at the feet of the handsome young gentleman who had come over from Europe for the season?

By the early 1880s, the new families had had enough, and, led by Alva Vanderbilt, the millionaires of the city built themselves their own opera house, christening it the Metropolitan Opera House. It took nearly three years to build, but on the night of 22 October 1883, the first ever production - Gounod's Faust - was performed. 

 

The original MET, 1411 Broadway, New York City (pictured 1905)

The original company at the MET - the orchestra, chorus and principle singers - were all Italian and therefore decided to sing everything in their native language, even Faust (which had been written in French) and Carmen (where the lyrics were also in French). However, as most people were attending for the glitz and the glamour and the gossip, only a few opera fanatics were likely to be disappointed by this. The first season made a loss of over half a million dollars, but this was quickly turned around. By 1885 - after only three seasons - the Academy of Music had been eclipsed, and showed its last opera at the end of the '85 season. The MET was now the place to be. 

The outside of the original building was not particularly ornate, interesting or different from most other New York City buildings of the time, but the interior was another story all together. Decorated in red and gold, there were three tiers of 36 boxes (so many seats in fact, that after a year the top tier was removed because there was no use for it). The  bottom tier became known as the diamond horseshoe, and you could be sure that if your family had a box there, you had indeed made it. 

Despite all this grandness, at the heart of it all there was the music. For the 1884-5 season, the radical decision was made that, instead of Italian, all operas should be sung in German, regardless of their original language, mainly because of the large German population of the city  - from the richest to the poorest. Ticket prices were slashed to a mere $3 - though this fairness wasn't universal: 23 members of the men's chorus went on strike for more money, but were quickly dismissed. By the 1890s, the board of directors had tired of the German music and demanded that all operas be sung in the language they were written in. This lead to the 'war of the operas' as the people of German origin insisted that they all be sung in German.

 Cartoon from Puck Magazine, depicting the 'war of the operas' - 1891

The house was destroyed by fire early in 1892, and the year's season was canceled. Upon its reopening the following year, however, operas were performed there in their native language for the first time. This led to the MET premiering many famous operas - most notably, those by Wagner - for the first time on American soil. The halls themselves were truly magnificent, having excellent acoustics even when filled with 3,625 people sitting, and another 244 standing at the front, but even from the earliest days, the stage facilities were known to be sorely inadequate. It took nearly 80 years before something was done about this, though, but in 1966 it was. The MET company moved into a new premises at the Lincoln Center, which not only has excellent acoustics and plenty of room for opera goers but also excellent staging. 

Today, the MET welcomes more than 800,000 people each season, not to mention those who see productions through their HD broadcasts around the world, starring today's best singers, such as the sublime production of Bizet's Carmen which myself and my good friend Charlotte went to see at a cinema in England last year, starring the immensely gifted mezzo soprano Elina Garanca.

It makes me wonder what Alva Vanderbilt and the other 'new money' families would make of it all. No doubt they would be very proud of their legacy, as well they should be...

London Calling

17 October seems to be a somewhat deadly day for Londoners, so, if you are one, I implore you to be extra careful today. I hope this didn't make you panic, as I may have exaggerated slightly there - the number of people killed on this day is pretty low. It's more that the circumstances of their deaths are unusual to say the least...

Firstly, we shall take a trip to 17 October 1091 - though I'd advise you to bring your wellies and possibly a change of clothes, as we're about to experience one of Britain's largest storms - so large, in fact, that it was actually a tornado. It was the earliest recorded tornado on mainland Britain and still holds the record for being the severest. Winds exceeded 200mph and caused London Bridge to fall down, as well as around 600 houses and the church of St. Mary-le-Bow. Astonishingly, records claim that only two people were killed as a result of the storm (reckoned to be a T8 category tornado, for those to whom that may mean something). 

Of course, this being medieval England, everything happened for a reason because God was displeased, and boy, did God have his reasons for being displeased. The King  at the time, William Rufus, the second son of William I (a.k.a the Conqueror), was a bit of a dodgy chap and there were many of his actions which may have resulted in God being pissed enough to send a tornado London's way. He allowed his soldiers to do as they pleased in Britain and lead by example - stealing from churches to fund his extravagant lifestyle of hunting and feasting. He also removed the Archbishop of Canterbury and other religious leaders who disagreed with him and mocked those who decided to go on Crusade, saying that they were engaging in a pointless waste of time and money. It is easy to see why people believed he wouldn't exactly be in God's best books...  

Fast forward a few hundred years, and we're still in London, even though now it's 1814. You could still do with having your wellies and waterproofs with you though, in case you get covered in beer. I am ashamed to say that I initially laughed at this story, but actually it's pretty horrible because it involves eight people dying, three of whom were children. But it should still be filed under 'what a way to go', I think...

The eight were killed on this day in 1814 when several vats of beer in a brewery on Tottenham Court Road ruptured, spilling more than 323,000 imperial gallons  into the street and causing the basements of the houses on the road to fill up with beer. The brewery was taken to court over the accident, but in the end did not have to pay the damages as the event was ruled an Act of God. I shall try not to draw any conclusions about God from this...

Many people rushed out onto the streets (the accident happened in one of the slums of London, so there were a lot of people around) with pots, pans and any other receptacles they could find to prevent the beer from going to waste, whilst others simply lapped it up where they were standing (or lying, after a while...). The final casualty came a few days later, in the form of a man who died from alcohol poisoning, who had clearly tried very hard to stem the flow. A hero, of sorts... 
   

That other lady with the lamp

Have you ever seen the film Carry On Up The Khyber? I'd recommend it, if you wanted to get an accurate historical view of what life was like for the military top brass in any British occupied country in Victorian times. Except really...

We're not very good at wars, I don't think. We like to see ourselves as the peacemakers, or the people who are fighting "for the greater good" against "the bad guys". We're the paternal influence; the father who threatens his children mainly with words, unless they do something really bad and we have to step in and give them a brief, but painful thrashing with the back of our hand. Or I think that's how those Tories think, anyway. Fortunately for me, I will never be in a position to check if that's true, unless something truly awful happens to me and/or I meet Doctor Who and he takes me back in his TARDIS to the Tory heyday of the mid-Victorian Empire.

[Note that what I said above pertains only to actual wars and fighting, not how we treated the people in the Empire. They were not looked upon paternally; they were treated as the scum of the earth instead. Stupid, stupid Empire builders.]

Anyway, during the first half of the nineteenth century, Britain - or, indeed, Europe as a whole - didn't really have much military experience. Of course, there were the Napoleonic conflicts, earlier on, but the were all over by 1815 when the Duke of Wellington won the Eurovision Song Contest with 'Waterloo' defeated Napoleon in battle. After this point, there weren't really any major wars or conflicts which the European nations were overly concerned with - until the Crimean War of 1854-56.

The seige of Sebastopol began today in 1854, making up part of the war. I don't want to go into too much detail about the war itself, because it made up a slightly yawn enduing part of my A Level course, but I would like to say this: if you discount all the people being killed in the battles (I am terribly sorry for the callousness of that phrase), this war was pretty much the biggest farce ever. 

Many, many men were killed in the war, on both sides (Russia, fighting the British, French, Turkish and Austrian alliance), but barely any were killed on the battlefield - most died because of the unsanitary conditions they were living in, or the cold. The Charge of the Light Brigade left so many men dead because their commanders weren't quite sure which instructions to follow, and sent them down the wrong valley, where they were shot to pieces by the Russians. The most use the (newly invented) telegraph was put to, was when The Times' correspondent used it to send back newspaper reports to the people at home. In short, the war was as big of a farce as Carry On Up The Khyber is. 

Something else despicable about the Empire is the way the British people used to treat people of any race and/or colour other than their own. An example of this can be found here - Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp, went out to nurse and generally Do Good, and schoolkids all over the land learn about her in their History lessons in primary school. How lovely. And I guess it is, but this sadly means that Mary Seacole is overlooked. Seacole did exactly the same thing as Nightingale, but had to pay her own way over there due to not having as privileged a background, where she could rely on her parents to pay her way in life. The only reason she is not taught in schools to the extent Nightingale is, though, is because she's black.

And there was me hoping we might have moved on from that way of thinking... Mary Seacole can have pride of place as the illustration of the day, though, so here she is: