Blogging 200 years of history from 1785-1985
 Australia's last surviving VC holder from the Second World War, Ted Kenna, has died aged 90, reports The Australian.
Kenna's VC award was reported in The Times on September 7, 1945, under the headline, A lieutenant's fight to the last.
His company had been tasked with capturing heavily armed enemy positions at Wewak, a major Japanese air base on the north coast of New Guinea. The attack came under fire from heavy machine-guns and they were pinned down, suffering extensive casualties. Then ...
Private Kenna, on his own initiative, immediately stood up in full view of the enemy less than 50 yards away, and engaged the bunker, firing his Bren gun from the hip. The enemy machine-gun returned his fire with such accuracy that bullets passed between his arms and his body.
Undeterred, he remained completely exposed and continued to fire until his magazine was exhausted. Still making a target of himself, Private Kenna, in spite of the intense machine-gun fire, seized a rifle and, with amazing coolness, killed the gunner with his first round.
A second automatic opened fire on Private Kenna from a different position, and another bf the enemy immediately tried to move into position behind the first machine-gun, but Private Kenna remained standing, and killed him with his next round.
The report concludes:
The result of Private Kenna's magnificent bravery in the face of concentrated fire was that the bunker was captured without further loss, and the company attack was successful.
The success of the company attack would have been seriously endangered and many casualties caused but for Private Kenna's magnificent courage and complete disregard for his own safety. His action was an outstanding example of the highest degree of bravery.
Picture: Michael Potter, The Australian
 Good news for genealogy hounds with French forebears; Ancestry.co.uk are planning to publish the names of thousands of people who died in the Revolution. French Deaths by Guillotine, 1792-96, will go online to mark Bastille Day, July 14.
Marie Antoinette and Robespierre are among the many thousands who went to the guillotine. Marie Antoinette's demise is described in this contemporary Times article:
It is with sincere regret we confirm the general report of yesterday, respecting the fate of this unfortunate Princess, who suffered under the axe of the guillotine on Wednesday last ...
Thus then has Marie Antoinette, the unfortunate Queen of France, been brought to the block, and thereby terminated a miserable existence. The descendant of the Caesars, condemned by sanguinary judges, has perished under the hands of a hangman.
That Robespierre, having orchestrated and defended the Terror, should then became one of its victims, came as no surprise. The Times gloated:
Robespierre has at length terminated his career at that guillotine, so often crimsoned with the blood of the innocent; and, if we are to judge of the present and future by the past, the villains who succeed him in power will most probably, in a short time, follow his example.
How often has this paper been condemned by the Jacobin prints for insisting that Robespierre's aim was the Dictatorship of France! And it is a satisfaction to us now to find that we were just in our prediction both of his intention and his fate.
Thanks to Executed Today again for the reminder about William John Marchant, who was hanged for murder on July 8, 1839.
Marchant was the under-footman in a prosperous house at 21 Cadogan Place, Chelsea. His victim, Elizabeth Paynton, was the under-housemaid.
According to the contemporary reports, there had been some larking about below stairs and Marchant, a young man with "rather unprepossessing features", had been challenged to try and untie Paynton's garters. Paynton, "a remarkably well-formed female", whacked him round the head and threatened to get him sacked, but instead of giving up he rushed off to find a razor to cut the garters off her. For some unfathomable reason, when he returned he had a rush of blood to the head and cut her throat instead.
Possibly, as he was of entirely good character previously, came from a respectable home and was filled with remorse, Marchant might have got off with transportation, but he insisted on pleading guilty at his trial, putting up no defence, and was hanged.
The Times didn't waste much sympathy on him, and in a leading article the day after his death delivered a stinging attack on the chaplain who had attended the wretched boy before his execution.
We think it may not be improper to address a word to the reverend chaplain who preached what is usually called the condemned sermon at Newgate. In that discourse is the following passage:
"To you, my dear young friend and fellow-sinner, it has happened that you, for the last time, are treading the courts ef God's house of prayer. Before tomorrow's sun shall have set you will have closed your eyes on this world. But, remember, should you leave it penitent, as I hope and believe you will, you will be welcomed to the heavenly abode by 10,000 angels, and become a trophy of sovereign grace and add another jewel to the diadem of mercy."
Now, far be it from us to presume to imagine any limit to the mercy of God; yet it certainly is a language which inspires disgust, that tells a condemned murderer that he is, upon any supposition of penitence - even allowing it to be the most sincere - to be "welcomed to the heavenly abode by 10,000 angels, and become a trophy of sovereign grace, and add another jewel to the diadem of mercy." We should recommend more caution to this reverend gentleman ... The chaplain of a public prison ought to be a very calm and cautious person, removed as much as possible from enthusiastic fervours of the above description.
I love that line - "Now, far be it from us to presume to imagine any limit to the mercy of God", which just has to be followed by a "but", as night follows day.
The chaplain's crime was enthusiasm, in those days code for religious fanaticism, or a belief that one was possessed by the holy spirit, or the presence of God. If individuals started to believe that they had a hotline to the divine this could threaten the whole stability of the Church of England and, by extension, the State itself.
He was sent off with the stiff recommendation to read some high Anglican texts, and a warning to stop giving the prisoners ideas.
News was received in London at the weekend that Mr Peter Fleming, who has been travelling on a mission for The Times in Manchuria, Mongolia, the interior of China, Northern Tibet and Sinkiang, has arrived safely at Kashgar
In spring, 1935, the explorer and writer Peter Fleming, brother of James Bond author, Ian, had gone missing somewhere in Central Asia, and his reappearance was noted with some relief in this July report.
Fleming was on a seven-month, 3,500 mile journey from Beijing to India, ostensibly in his role as an explorer, but in fact to report back to The Times on what was happening in the remote and inaccessible territory of Xinjiang, or Chinese Turkestan.
Two years earlier the Chinese governor of Xinjiang (Sinkiang to The Times then) had been all but overthrown by a rebellion of the Turkic people, of whom the Uighurs now form the largest group. The regime was rescued by Russian intervention, and although Xinjiang was officially part of China, by the time Fleming arrived there it was under the control of the Soviets, "unblushingly trespassing in Chinese territory".
 Emerging from a long and hazardous trek across mountain and desert, Fleming's little camel caravan walked into a full-scale Great Game drama, which he described subsequently in a series of articles in The Times, and a book, News from Tartary. The pictures on this post were also taken by him - a soldier of the rebel Chinese Muslim army aiming a British SMLE No3 rifle, above, and Fleming's camel train, below.
In a leading article introducing his series of reports, The Times said:
Peter Fleming lifts the veil which in recent years has hidden, or at best obscured, the politics of that remote Moslem dependency of China, the province of Sinkiang
You can read Fleming's reports below. I'm afraid that in the 1930s The Times used to start extended pieces such as these in the right-hand column - they were called turnover articles - and unless you''re a subscriber to the Archive you'll need to click on the "read plain text" link below the article viewer in order to get the whole thing.
If it is untrue to say that at least four Powers are watching with the keenest interest current developments in the Chinese province of Sinkiang, or Eastern Turkestan, it is only untrue because developments in Sinkiang are practically impossible to watch - Rivalries in Sinkiang, Part One
The Russians have a monopoly of the very valuable trade in unborn lamb-skins - Rivalries in Sinkiang, Part Two
I cannot conceal my suspicion that Russia does not really know what she is up to in Chinese Central Asia - Rivalries in Sinkiang, Part Three
Also in the Archive blog:
Baldies, flying eggs and monstrous noses - the leading articles of Peter Fleming
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 Compare and contrast these two quotes:
"Once for all, we request to be spared being supervised like a pupil by a governess." A. Hitler, 1938
"If you have to keep referring to your grandmother before you do anything I think that’s dumb." B. Ecclestone, 2009
OK, so Bernie says he didn't really mean all that about admiring Hitler, but they do seem to share a spooky kind of sexism don't they?
For the rest of Adolf's interesting take on the democratic process you can read this 1938 speech: "I the arch-democrat ..."
 It was 150 years ago today that the French acrobat Charles Blondin made his first tightrope walk over Niagara Falls. In the following weeks he repeated the stunt several times, to huge crowds of spectators, with ever more weird and terrifying refinements.
By the time The Times caught up with the story, excursion trains and steamers were running from Chicago, Detroit and Toronto, to watch Blondin's carrying his unfortunate manager piggy-back across the void. The article was, not unreasonably, headlined "extraordinary foolhardiness".
A few days later came another report, "More buffoonery at Niagara", which was one way of describing a man carrying a portable kitchen 1,000 feet above the falls, and stopping in the middle to cook and eat an omelette. The reporter was happy to report that by now the crowds , by now rather jaded by all the excitement, were dwindling.
Then, bizarrely, a resident of Niagara wrote to the paper to complain that Blondin was a hoax, and the whole thing had been got up to make money for the rail companies, a claim that was quickly denied by an eye-witness.
Despite this inauspicious publicity, Blondin became a bit hit in the UK and Ireland, and died eventually in Ealing, where he is immortalised in Blondin Avenue, and its parallel street, Niagara Avenue.
Click on the links above for the orginal Times reports and obituary.
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 And he didn't even serve the full time.
The inventor of the pyramid selling scheme which now carries his name, and for which Bernard Madoff has been given 150 years, was first sentenced to five years, for mail fraud; he served three and a half. He then got seven to nine years for larceny and fraud, of which he served seven. On his release he was finally deported to Italy.
You can read The Times's reports of his career in this Archive blog post, Charles Ponzi and his scheme.
 I'm sorry if this gives away the end of the film, but John Dillinger was shot by police in a gun battle on July 24, 1934.
He was immensely famous. News of his death merited no less than two news articles and a leading article in The [London] Times.
First, came the actual news report:
The desperado John Dillinger was shot and killed last night by Federal detectives as he came out of a cinema theatre in Chicago. They took no chance of his putting up a fight but shot him from behind point-blank, hitting him once in the head and twice in the body. He died in an ambulance without uttering a word.
A soft-shod detective stole up behind Dillinger from a doorway, set a pistol against his back, and fired. Three other shots were fired by detectives in rapid succession. One of the bullets went wide and gave glancing wounds to two women passers-by.
Betrayed by an acquaintance, Anna Sage, Dillinger had been recognised by Chicago FBI head, Melvin Purvis, despite his extensive disguise.
When his body was examined at the morgue there was some difficulty in making positive identification of him, for he had burned his fingertips with acid to hide their betraying lines, and had plucked out much of the hair from his eyebrows, besides having had the shape of his nose and his cheeks altered.
On another page of the paper, was a distinctly colourful summary of Dillinger's career:
No American outlaw, not even the notorious Jesse James, was ever more hunted than Dillinger, who was killed by detectives last night.
Time and again he escaped capture or death by the narrowest of margins, shooting his way out of traps in which several of his companions were killed and owing his life as much perhaps to his luck as to the bullet-proof vests he almost invariably wore.
The article details his incredible career of gaol breaks, bank robberies, murders, kidnappings, captures and escapes. But just in case anyone thought this was some sort of a jolly caper, there was also a leading article.
The intrepid men of the Chicago Department of justice who on Sunday night trapped and killed John Dillinger have earned the world's congratulations on the completion of their grim task.
BUT, and there was a big but. First of all, in order to catch him the police had acted like gangsters themselves.
There are countries where the disposal of public enemies by surprise attack and swift slaying, instead of by arrest and trial, is regarded as entirely satisfactory. It is certainly not so regarded in Washington.
And, there was Dillinger's fame; his notoriety had made him a national hero.
Some reports of Dillinger's death say that souvenir-hunters soaked their handkerchiefs in his blood upon the pavement. This is the reverence that has been done in the past to the bodies of kings and martyrs.
The popular delusion that has surrounded the obscene Dillinger with a like romanticism is the supreme evil that the United States has to overcome.
So have they succeeded? With Johnny Depp as Dillinger? I don't think so.
By the way, does anyone know what film he went to see before he was shot? The Times just describes it as a "gangster film", which seems like a bit of a cop out. Are they sure it wasn't the 1935 blockbuster, The Barretts of Wimpole Street?
With a telescope one could see myriads of men on each side fighting at all points; dead bodies of men and horses strewn on the ground, with the wreck of uniforms and arms; but to the naked eye it seemed as if a vast ant hill were in motion - men becoming pigmies, as they doubtless are, in encounters of such magnitude.
Red Cross and Red Crescent volunteers are meeting in Solferino, in northern Italy, to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the battle which inspired the founding of the organisation.
On the evening of June 24, 1859, a Swiss businessman, Henri Dunant, arrived in Solferino to find scenes of carnage in which 6,000 Austrian and French soldiers had been killed, and around 35,000 wounded. The battle was graphically described in this Times report.
 Dunant was shocked to find the wounded lying more or less unattended on the battlefield. He organised teams of locals to help, and himself provided funds and equipment. When The Times's reporter returned to the scene three weeks later, it seemed that almost all the evidence of a battle had been cleared away.
Three years later, Dunant published a book, A Memory of Solferino, suggesting the formation of an international volunteer organisation to care for wounded soldiers. The idea was taken up, first in Geneva and then across Europe, and his insistence that members of the organisation should have neutral and protected status became one of the founding tenets of the Geneva Convention, adopted in 1864.
Dunant's organisation was renamed the International Committee of the Red Cross and went from strength to strength, but he was frozen out after going bankrupt, and spent many years in the wilderness before his achievement was recognised with the first ever award of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.
In the UK, fundraising for the Red Cross started in earnest after a letter was published in The Times in 1870, as news arrived of the outbreak of the Franco Prussian War. C. J. Burgess of the international committee wrote:
Every country in Europe, except England, has its "Societe de Secours aux Blesses et Malades Militaires". Now is our opportunity to form a strong British "Society of Help for the Sick and Wounded."
A few days later came a letter from an old Crimea hand, Robert Loyd Lindsay, announcing the setting up of a committee, The National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War, and the deposit of £1,000 at Coutts Bank to start the fund. A further letter brought a more direct appeal to the public, and the news of royal patronage.
And on September 12, a mere seven weeks later, The Times reported that "the total contributions paid to Captain Burgess or into Coutts's Bank on behalf of the society are now considerably in excess of £100,000". By the end of October, Captain Loyd Lindsay sent The Times this financial report, with subscriptions standing at an astonishing £263,000.
As well as the sick and wounded, the Red Cross's remit soon extended to caring for prisoners of war. Since my father was kept alive with Red Cross food parcels through five years' captivity in the Second World War, my family has plenty to be grateful to it for. In fact, without it I suppose I wouldn't have been born.
International Committee of the Red Cross
 Some commenters on John Bercow's accession to the Speaker's chair seem to be upset that he's decided to ditch the full Speaker's rig and appear in a suit.
As long ago as 1868, The Times greeted the election of a new Speaker with a leading article appealing for reform on the subject of formal dress. At that time, all MPs had to wear full court dress to go to the Speaker's parties and this newspaper thought the rule highly unfair to the fat, the scrawny and the bandy-legged.
Court Dress is, at least on the majority of figures, ugly, ridiculous, and productive of a painful self-consciousness likely to interfere with self-possession. An Apollo, of course, will look the better the more thoroughly a pretence of clothing reveals his real form; but Silenus would rather give less distinct outline to his rotundity, Vulcan will wish to disguise his crooked shanks, and Pluto his gaunt limbs.
Speaker Bercow is hardly a Silenus or a Pluto, and I'm glad to say I've never seen a picture of him in shorts so I'm sure his motives for dropping the tights come from an admirable desire for modernisation, as elegantly expressed in the leader.
Dress ought to equalize rather than distinguish men in this civilized age, in which we exercise our political rights without much respect of persons - at least, with respect rather to their character and positions.
The Speaker's salary today, at £141,866 is worth something like £100,000 less than his equivalent in 1789, when this article was published. The pay may have been magnificent, but the difficulties of the job made it well-deserved.
The salary of the Speaker is between seven and eight thousand pounds per annum, besides patronage; but then it requires so much parliamentary knowledge, such promptness, evenness of temper and, above all, such drudging attendance, as can only make it a bait for the most patient ambition.
The one thing the writer of this article didn't anticipate was that the Speaker's own party wouldn't have voted for him:
Though the official duty of a Speaker of the House of Commons is to act as a kind of President in putting questions, etc, etc, yet to carry the election of one has ever been reckoned as the first great test of the prevalency of either party in the House.
Swift once said, when the choice of a Speaker was mentioned as of no great consequence, the office being only to deliver the words of other people, "admitting this, who would choose a footman to deliver a message, whose interest and opinion led him to wish it might miscarry."
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