Blogging 200 years of history from 1785-1985
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The Times, November 13, 1821
Foreigners amuse themselves with describing England as the most gloomy of all nations, and November as the month when the English have no other enjoyment but that of hanging and drowning themselves.
The real fact is, that on a general computation, the English are least addicted to the crime of suicide than any other nation; and that as to the much-abused month of November, it is so far from being the first in the bad pre-eminence of self-murder, that it stands only seventh in the list of infamy
If you click on the link above you can see that the most dangerous month for suicides, at least in the ten years from 1811-21 was July, followed by June and March. A few years later a similar chart has April way ahead, followed by June again, May and July. And that was even without the weathermen changing their minds about barbeque summers.
In the chart above, taken from police records in 1839, it seems that "general bad conduct" is the most popular motive, but that "domestic chagrin" and plain misery come close behind. The writer of this article, a doctor Forbes Winslow, is particularly nationalistic about England's record.
The English have been accused by foreigners of being the beau ideal of a suicidal people. The charge is almost too ridiculous to merit serious refutation. It has been clearly established that where there is one suicide in London there are five in Paris.
And the English have to have a decent excuse. After discussing the influence of heredity, impotence and constipation, Dr Winslow homes in on the Achilles heel that you might expect to find on a nation of shopkeepers.
If an Englishman commits suicide it generally arises from some sudden reverse of fortune, or grievous disappointment, which is allowed to prey upon his mind until he is induced to seek relief in the arms of death. In great mercantile communities, where men may be reduced in a few minutes from affluence to beggary, the crime of suicide will prevail.
Wounded pride, disappointment, the schemes of an existence laid in the dust, the insulting pity of friends, the humbled despair of all our dearest connexions, for whom, perbaps, we toiled and wrought, the height from which we have fallen, the impossibility of regaining what we have lost, the searching curiosity of the public, all rushing upon a man's mind in the sudden convulsion and turbulence of its elements, what wonder that he welcomes the only escape from the abysss into which he has been hurled.
Across the Channel, according to our doctor, they have an alarmingly flippant attitude. A bad night at cards or a romantic setback are enough to persuade a Frenchman to shoot himself, whereas
We can be romantic without blowing out our brains. English lovers, when the course of true love is interrupted, do not retire to some secluded spot, and rush into the next world by a brace of pistols tied up with cherry-coloured ribands. When we do shoot ourselves, it is done with true English gravity
For gravity, read drink?
Dr Schlegel traces the disposition to commit suicide among the English, Germans, and Russians, to intemperance, in France to love and gambling, and in Spain to bigotry
And where does that leave the Irish ...
The Irish are said to be the least disposed, of all nations in the world, to commit suicide. Dublin and Naples are the two cities in which fewest suicides occur; yet in both the poorer classes are poor indeed.
Dr Graves observes that an Irishman often murders his neighbour, but he has too high a sense of propriety to think of killing himself.
 ... and what Ruskin really thought about Millais.
The BBC's latest costume drama, with Millais, Holman Hunt and Rosetti played as Young British Artists with Ruskin as their Charles Saatchi, has rather divided the TV critics.
Caitlin Moran (for The Times) gives it a blistering thumbs down, while Roland White (for The Sunday Times) thinks it's a lot of fun.
This may just be summer schedule fatique, but I'm with Roland White. One thing that came out in last night's episode was how obsessed the artists were with their reviews, so, after watching Elizabeth Siddall freezing in the bath at some length, I had a look at the Archive to see what the paper thought of Millais' Ophelia when it was first exhibited.
Not much is the answer. Our reviewer who went to the Royal Academy's 1852 private view said:
There must be something strangely perverse in an imagination which souses Ophelia in a weedy ditch, and robs the drowning struggle of that lovelorn maiden of all pathos and beauty
A few days later, he had another go:
Mr Millais' Ophelia in her pool ... makes us think of a dairymaid in a frolic ... [he] has attempted to render the very act of drowning as if it were some freak of rude health instead of the climax of distraction
Ruskin had pitched in more than once in The Times letters to defend the Pre Raphaelites against a uniformly hostile press. He wasn't uncritical himself, but he made a plea to the paper to give them a chance:
I believe these young artists to be at a most critical point of their career, from which they may either sink into nothingness or rise to very real greatness
and in this thoughtful letter he tries to analyse why their paintings are so unpopular, and concludes:
I wish them all heartily good speed, believing in sincerity that if they temper the courage and energy which they have shown in the adoption of their system with patience and discretion in pursuing it, and if they do not suffer themselve to be driven by harsh or careless criticism into rejection of the ordinary means of obtaining influence over the minds of others, they may, as they gain experience, lay in our England the foundations of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for 300 years.
"A dairymaid in a frolic", Ophelia, by John Everett Millais, Tate Gallery
 A lot has been written in the last week about Harry Patch, the last of the WW1 British infantry soldiers, who has just died aged 111. In this audio interview you can hear him describing in his own words what happened when he was injured by the shell burst that killed three of his comrades, on September 22, 1917:
The only thing I saw was a flash when the shell burst and the concussion threw me to the ground. I didn't know I was hit. I thought it was just the concussion ...
The Last Fighting Tommy, By Harry Patch with Richard Van Emden, Published by Hachette Digital
 Berlin Motor Show, 1939. Hitler arrives with an escort of racing cars and motor cycles to be greeted by 20,000 men of the National-Socialist Motor Corps.
Despite gimmicks like a fitted wash basin and running hot and cold water, there is no car at the show that can rival the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) car, later known as the Volkswagen Beetle, which, The Times reported, would soon be pouring off the production lines.
The great works at Fallersleben, in which the German Government will build this People's Car, are rising rapidly and delivery will begin in the spring of next year to the thousands of Germans who are week by week under strong official encouragement saving towards the purchase price of 950 marks (£47 10s at the normal rate).
Our correspondent was impressed with the engineering and design:
The "K.d.F. Wagen" is a remarkably handsome little car, with its streamlined body, its air-cooled engine mounted in the rear, and producing according to the claims of its builders a speed of 60 miles an hour. While the luggage space is restricted, there is plenty of room for five persons to sit in reasonable comfort on its seats upholstered in artificial tweed, and the controls and dashboard accessories, although fully adequate, have been reduced to a minimum.
The car has, however, a built-in system of heating by hot air from the induction, double windscreen wipers, and a complete set of tools. Such matters as wheel changing have received particular attention and it is claimed that this process can be accomplished quicker than on most types of car.
But coming down to earth with a bit of a bump, the report has some less welcome news:
The Army produced a surprise this year by showing a new tank of about 30 tons - the largest which the German forces yet possess. This vehicle mounts in a central revolving turret two guns of an apparent calibre of 3in and 2in respectively, as well as a heavy machine-gun, while two more machine-guns are carried in turrets on either side.
And joy-riders, just don't even think about it:
The Fuhrer ended his speech with a stern warning to reckless and careless drivers, who would, he said, be severely punished.
Nice try by the German Railways PR department, who placed this advert in The Times on July 25, 70 years ago.
"Germany, land of hospitality
Nearly 2,000 miles of unique Autobahn motor roads, fast planes or modern rail coaches provide swift, comfortable travel from the North Sea to the Alps, from the Rhine to Austria ..."
Despite the promise of 50 per cent discounts if you bought your tickets and marks in nice hard currency outside Germany, only the hardiest optimists presumably took up the offer. On August 2, a Times article on holiday destinations noted that German tourism was suffering a bit of a slump:
Visitors to France account for 75 per cent of the total number going to the Continent. Next in order come Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, Holland, Italy, and Germany. A few applications have come from people desiring to visit Spain. It may be remarked that in the year before last Germany occupied first place in the list.
 This is a fabulous read. 100 years ago, July 25, 1909, Louis Blériot managed to make the first flight across the English Channel in a monoplane made of oak and poplar held together with piano strings. Charles Bremner has filed here on today's festivities, but if you click on the links here you can read the original Times reports.
Our reporter filed a breathless account of the preparations and take-off, following the flight for as long as he could with a telescope, and then joining "a general stampede" of motor-cars, cabs and bicycles to Sangatte, "where the wireless telegraphy apparatus was sure to be the first medium for news from England". As soon as the Blériot's arrival in Dover was confirmed, he grabbed the 1.20 passenger ferry from Calais, arriving in time to interview the triumphant aviator on Dover Pier.
The detail in this story is superb; Blériot walking on crutches because of an earlier accident; the moaning noise made by the propellors before they fired; the terrifying bouncy take-off surrounded by hundreds of excited villagers; the plane disappearing into the mist at a dizzying height of 250ft over the sea.
Blériot got a hero's welcome in London, but The Times's leader writer obviously felt he'd been lucky. Congratulations were duly handed out, but more time was spent sympathising with the Anglo-French contender, Hubert Latham, who, it was suggested, would have been there first had he not been forced to ditch in the sea on his first attempt.
While Blériot's demeanour gets hardly a mention, Latham is applauded over and over again for his generosity in defeat, "his splendid good humour and fortitude".
Typical British reaction. There's nothing we like like a good loser.
Heinz Edelmann, art director of the Beatles 1968 animation, Yellow Submarine, has died, aged 75.
He nearly didn't get the job; The New York Times obit has a great story about how it happened.
Neither the Beatles nor Brian Epstein were keen on the project, put off by a rather bland series of children's cartoons set to Beatles songs, produced by Al Brodax. Epstein was finally won over after walking round the Tate Gallery with Brodax and becoming transfixed by Turner's Peace - Burial at Sea.
“Wouldn’t it be great if we could get those colors to move?” Mr Brodax asked.
Mr Epstein replied, “We would need great art.”
Mr Edelmann was the perfect artist, Mr Epstein finally agreed, and “Yellow Submarine” had some of the Turner’s shimmering quality.
The Times review of the film acknowledged the importance of Edelmann's work:
Instead of seeking to hold attention by a steady narrative flow it bombards spectators with a succession of visual effects, sometimes beautiful, sometimes hideous, always immediately striking. If one asks what it is about, the answer has nothing to do with plot or character: it is about British popular design in the late 1960s. During its making it seems to have been worked on by just about every notable animator in this country, and it looks like it.
Though the characteristic style of designer Heinz Edelmann is the dominating factor, with its bland, flattened simplifications of art nouveau and jazz-modern motifs rendered in a range of pastel/ psychedelic shades, within this framework are contained episodes in wildly varied styles, so that if you don't like one, at least you know that in a couple of minutes it will be replaced by something totally different.
Taken as a whole, the film is a panorama of everything that every colour supplement has done in the last two years, and as such is already a trifle dated before it hits the screen ... it is a real document of the fleeting moment at which one can already see "now" becoming "period".
Also in the Archive blog: Let It Be - The Times review
The Beatles and the Maharishi - this is where it all began
Thanks to Michael Moran for sending this film of a teenaged Jim Morrison appearing in a promotional film for Florida State University.
The Times obituary of Morrison says he was born in California, which doesn't accord with other sources, but with his father in the US Navy it seems he spent a fairly peripatetic childhood, split between the West Coast and Florida.
The obituary will probably be taken to task by Doors fans on several fronts, not least its conclusion:
The music itself was never as strong as the band's collective imagination suggested: Morrison was in fact not a good singer, and possessed a very limited technical and emotional range. It was his face, with its look of a fallen angel, and his agonized bearing which drew him so many admirers.
When Margaret Thatcher blew the whistle on Anthony Blunt in November 1979, he not surprisingly did his best to disappear.
At first he was reported to be lying low somewhere in the Mediterranean but he'd, in fact, gone no further than the Kensington flat of his friend, Brian Sewell.
Sewell broke cover in a letter to The Times to defend Blunt against what he described as the "unedifying" sound of "Labour Members of Parliament baying for vengeance with cries of Privilege and Establishment". Given his closeness to Blunt, it's interesting to read the justification he gives of his friend's first engagement with communism - and its similarity to Blunt's own account, just published:
they [the Labour MPs] should recall that Blunt's experience of the twenties and thirties was clearer and sharper for him than is the mythology of that period for them, and that views formed by him then were held with the same passion and for the same compassionate reasons as their own views now, and with many of the same changes in society as an aim. Heroism and treachery are obverse and reverse of the same coin.
Sewell also told The Times that Blunt had "gone away for a few days in the care of friends," something that he was to continue to do over the next year or so whenever new revelations brought reporters back to his doorstep.
One refuge he used was with some friends of my parents. Invited to lunch, my Ma and Pa were astonished to find Blunt in residence, and rather indignant that he seemed entirely at ease, holding court and being the life and soul of the party while his hosts were looking fraught and exhausted.
Assuming that Blunt was long gone, they returned the invitation a few weeks later, only to be asked, "Is it all right if we bring Anthony?"
My father wasn't exactly thrilled, especially when a neighbour accused him of entertaining a traitor and offered to horsewhip Blunt out of the village. My mother got straight on the phone to me, suggesting that I might possibly want to be there.
It was a collectable event. Blunt must have known that he wasn't necessarily going to be popular guest number one at West Country lunch parties and he moved into immediate charm overdrive, engaging my Pa in complimentary conversation about his pictures until that traitor stuff seemed to have been completely forgotten. The only social awkwardness was my worry that mother would start making spy jokes. She did, but luckily only I noticed.
Much of the coverage at the time of Blunt's exposure depicted him as a frail and broken man. In the photograph (below) of his interview with The Times he looks shrunken and penitent, and in today's report he is suppposed to have "seriously considered" taking his own life.
No one would have guessed any of that from the suave and charming spy who came to lunch.
 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 ..."
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