Victorian Era
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Victorian Era’
The villagers of Mabutso in Southern Africa begged Dr David Livingstone to rid them of a menacing pride of lions.
On February 16th, 1844, Scottish missionary David Livingstone was digging a water channel at his mission near the South African village of Mabotsa when the villagers rushed up, crying that lions had again raided their village and slaughtered their sheep and goats. Livingstone ‘very imprudently’ agreed to go with them and demoralise the pride by shooting one of the dominant males.
Mill owner William Grant was deeply hurt by a scurrilous pamphlet circulated by a fellow businessman, and vowed the miscreant would live to regret it.
Among the many memorable characters in Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby are Ned and Charles Cheeryble, the vehemently philanthropic brothers who employ Nicholas on a delicate mission to Walter Bray. They are widely believed to be based on William (1769-1842) and Daniel (?1780-1855) Grant of Ramsbottom in Lancashire, and from this tale one can see the similarities very clearly.
Shortly before the American Civil War, an attack by pro-slavery militants on the city of Lawrence prompted John Brown to try to clean up Kansas.
As the United States of America lurched towards the Civil War, the State of Kansas found herself torn into two. Two rival ‘governments’ sprang up, each with its own capital, one for a Slave-owning state and one for a Free state. In 1861, Kansas declared for the Union but it had been a close-run thing and some of her sons had not been too nice in their methods.
Following a decisive victory in the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln urged his supporters to make sure that liberty’s advantage was not squandered.
The Battle of Gettysburg ended on July 3rd 1863 in victory for the Union against the Confederate South. On November 19th, US President Abraham Lincoln delivered an address at the battlefield cemetery. He rightly guessed that the battle had turned the American Civil War; but in thinking that ‘the world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here’ he was touchingly mistaken.
Two years into the American Civil War, the Union army responded to a dispiriting defeat at Chancellorsville with a decisive and historic victory at Gettysburg.
The Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania ended on July 3rd 1863 in victory for the Union against the Confederate South. Yet it came hard on the heels of a bruising defeat at the hands of General Robert E. Lee at Chancellorsville, and the great issues that hung upon the American Civil War were, for a few days, very much in the balance.
The steering committee for the Great Exhibition of 1851 turned down all 245 designs submitted for the iconic venue.
Sir Joseph Paxton, a consultant to the Duke of Devonshire, was the man who designed the ‘Crystal Palace,’ the enormous cast iron and glass conservatory that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851 seen by over six million people. Not only was the design groundbreaking, but the way Paxton brought it to the attention of the Building Committee was decidedly modern too.