Fifty Years Ago. Walter Besant
clerks, bankers, and brokers all had influenza; at Woolwich fifty men of the Royal Artillery and Engineers were taken into hospital daily, with influenza. The epidemic seems to have broken out suddenly, and suddenly to have departed. Another important event of the year was the establishment of steam communication with India by way of the Red Sea. The ‘Atalanta’ left Bombay on October 2, and arrived at Suez on October 16. The mails were brought into Alexandria on the 20th, and despatched, such was the celerity of the authorities, on November 7 by H.M.S. ‘Volcano.’ They reached Malta on the 11th, Gibraltar on the 16th, and England on December 4, taking sixty days in all, of which, however, eighteen days were wasted in Alexandria, so that the possible time of transit from Bombay to England was proved to be forty-two days.
This was the year of the Greenacre murder. The wretched man was under promise to marry an elderly woman, thinking she had money. One night, while they were drinking together, she confessed that she had none, and had deceived him; whereupon, seized with wrath, he took up whatever weapon lay to his hand, and smote her on the head so that she fell backwards dead. Now mark: if this man had gone straight to the nearest police-office, and confessed the crime of homicide, he would certainly have escaped hanging. But he was so horribly frightened at what had happened, that he tried to hide the thing by cutting up the body and bestowing the fragments in various places, all of them the most likely to be discovered. There was another woman in the case, proved to have been in his confidence, and tried with him, when all the pieces had been recovered, and the murder was brought home to him. He was found guilty and hanged. And never was there a hanging more numerously or more fashionably attended. The principal performer, however, is said to have disappointed his audience by a pusillanimous shrinking from the gallows when he was brought out. The woman was sent to Australia, where, perhaps, she still survives.
THE QUEEN’S FIRST COUNCIL—KENSINGTON PALACE, JUNE 20, 1837.
(From the Picture by Sir David Wilkie, R.A., at Windsor Castle.)
PEELER
There was also, this year, an extremely scandalous action in the High Court of Justice. It was a libel case brought by Lord de Ros, and arose out of a gambling quarrel, in which his lordship was accused of cheating at cards. It was said that, under pretence of a bad cough and asthma, he kept diving under the table and fishing up kings and aces, a thing which seems of elementary simplicity, and capable of clear denial. His lordship, in fact, did deny it, stoutly and on oath. Yet the witnesses as stoutly swore that he did do this thing, and the jury found that he did. Whereupon his lordship retired to the Continent, and shortly afterwards died, s.p., without offspring to lament his errors.
A SHOW OF TWELFTH CAKES.
There was a terrible earthquake this year in the Holy Land. The town of Safed was laid in ruins, and more than four thousand of the people were killed. There was a project against the life of Louis-Philippe, by one Champion, who was arrested. He was base enough to hang himself in prison, so that no one ever knew if he had any accomplices.
The news arrived also of a dreadful massacre in New Zealand. There was only one English settlement in the country; it was at a place called Makuta, in the North Island, where a Mr. Jones, of Sydney, had a flax establishment, consisting of 120 people, men, women, and children. They were attacked by a party of 800 natives, and were all barbarously murdered.
A fatal duel was fought on Hampstead Heath, near the Spaniards Tavern. The combatants were a Colonel Haring, of the Polish army, and another Polish officer, who was shot. The seconds carried him to the Middlesex Hospital, where he died, and nothing more was said about it.
THE SPANIARDS TAVERN, HAMPSTEAD
The dangers of emigration were illustrated by the voyage of the good ship ‘Diamond,’ of Liverpool. She had on board a party of passengers emigrating to New York. In the good old sailing days, the passengers were expected to lay in their own provisions, the ship carrying water for them. Now the ‘Diamond’ met with contrary winds, and was ninety days out, three times as long as was expected. The ship had no more than enough provisions for the crew, and when the passengers had exhausted their store their sufferings were terrible.
GREENWICH PARK.
An embassy from the King of Madagascar arrived this year, and was duly presented at Court. I know not what business they transacted, but the fact has a certain interest for me because it was my privilege, about four-and-twenty years ago, to converse with one of the nobles who had formed part of that embassy, and who, after a quarter of a century, was going again on another mission to the Court of St. James. He was, when I saw him, an elderly man, dark of skin, but, being a Hova, most intelligent and well-informed; also, being a Hova, anxious to say the thing which would please his hearers. He recalled many incidents connected with the long journey round the Cape in a sailing vessel, the crowds and noise of London, the venerable appearance of King William, and his general kindness to the ambassadors. When he had told us all he could recollect, he asked us if we should like to hear him sing the song which had beguiled many weary hours of his voyage. We begged him to sing it, expecting to hear something national and fresh, something redolent of the Madagascar soil, a song sung in the streets of its capital, Antananarivo, perhaps with a breakdown or a walk round. Alas! he neither danced a breakdown, nor did he walk round, nor did he sing us a national song at all. He only piped, in a thin sweet tenor, and very correctly, that familiar hymn ‘Rock of Ages,’ to the familiar tune. I have never been able to believe that this nobleman, His Excellency the Right Honourable the Lord Rainiferingalarovo, Knight of the Fifteen Honour, entitled to wear a lamba as highly striped as they are made, commonly reported to be a pagan, with several wives, really comforted his soul, while at sea, with this hymn. But he was with Christians, and this was a missionary’s hymn which he had often heard, and it would doubtless please us to hear it sung. Thereupon he sang it, and a dead silence fell upon us. Behold however, the reason why the record of this simple event, the arrival of the embassy from Madagascar, strikes a chord in the mind of one at least who reads it. There is little else to chronicle in the year. The University of Durham was founded: a truly brilliant success have they made of this learned foundation! And Sir Robert Peel was Rector of Glasgow University. For the rest, boilers burst, coaches were upset, and many books of immense genius were produced, which now repose in the Museum.
SIR ROBERT PEEL
Yet a year which marked the close of one period and the commencement of another. The steamship ‘Atalanta’ carrying the bags to Suez—what does this mean? The massacre in New Zealand of the only white men on the island—what does this portend? The fatal duel at Hampstead; the noble lord convicted of cheating at cards; the emigrant ship ninety days out with no food for the passengers—what are these things but illustrations of a time that has now passed away, the passage from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century? For there are no longer any duels; noble lords no longer gamble, unless they are very young and foolish; ships no longer take passengers without food for them; we have lessened the distance to India by three-fourths, measured by time; and the Maoris will rise no more, for their land is filled with the white men.
In that year, also, there were certain ceremonies observed which have now partly fallen into disuse.
THE CHIMNEY-SWEEPS’ ANNUAL HOLIDAY.
For instance, on Twelfth Day it was the custom for confectioners to make in their windows a brave show of Twelfth-cakes; it was also the custom of the public to flatten their noses against the windows and to gaze upon the treasures displayed to view.