10th June 1880-Malt Follows Hops in Having Its Duty Removed.
Stilts were the order of the day as late as the 1950s for stringing hops.
‘Say, for what were hop-yards meant/Or why was Burton built on Trent?’-Housman reminds us the importance of hops in the brewing process.(1)
The Author remembers working in the Hop Stores of the famed Bass-Worthington Breweries in Burton-on-Trent, where the Fuggles and Goldings from mainly Kent and Herefordshire revealed a litany of villages: Paddock Wood, Faversham, Goudhurst, Tenterden, Horsemonden, Bromyard and those from the Hop Gardens of Brewers, Shepherd Neame.
Arriving by rail, in large sacks called pockets they had to be weighed and blended for use, and despite wearing a white-coat, the penetration of the aroma remained as a pungent reminder of the resinous hop
The final removal of duty on brewing materials Today in 1880 came in Gladstone’s Budget with the abolition of duty on brewing malt. The Act known as the Free Mash Tun Tax, gave in effect brewers the right to brew from any materials they so desired. From now on tax would be calculated from the liquor or wort of the brewing process.
The abolition of the duty on hops in 1862 had been the first move in removing brewing raw material duties; hops having been an essential beer ingredient from the 15thc.
There is a reference in the Norwich Leet Roll of 1288/9 to Cervesiam Handrensem or ‘Flanders Ale’ which Ricardo Somer (Richard Summer) was fined 2 shillings for selling ‘occulte’ [secretly] thus depriving bailiffs of money due on sale of ale.
The first import of Low Country ‘beere’ into England came in 1362/3 when James Dodyessone of Amsterdam paid a toll on beer at Yarmouth. There seemed to be imports into London from the late 14thc as Henry Vandate [probably Dutch] brought four barrels of beer into the capital in 1372.
Hopped drink was seen in 1412 in Colchester with trade in the hands of immigrants from the Low Country. However for the next century the English remained wedded to unhopped ‘ale’. Also what curtailed hop use was the ‘bittering’ preserving resins, which are not very soluble, so there was the need for a long and expensive 90 minutes boiling called isomerisation which causes a physical change in the hop acids making for a more soluble molecule. In those days nobody would waste precious fuel in such long boiling(2)
(1) A Shropshire Lad (1896) A.E.Housman (1859-1936).
(2) Isomerisation is where one molecule is changed into another with the same number of atoms but are re-arranged and it can be spontaneous. The degree of isomerisation and bitter flavour depends on boil time
16th century collection of hops.
Alph acids (‘a acids’) are a class of compounds of importance to beer coming from resin glands of the hop flower and so imparting bitterness.
‘A’ acids may isomerise to form iso-alph acids by heat in solution. Iso-alpha ‘a’ acids (iso-‘a’-acids) are produced when hops are added to boiling wort. Beta acids don’t isomerise; their benefit is in giving aroma.
Ref: History of Beer and Brewers, Ian Spencer Hornsey.
Ref: Beerhouse Act 1830 et al replaced 5.11.1993.
Ref Parliamentary Acts, Hansard.
Ref: Google.co.uk/books P.472 Abolishment of Hop Duty 1862.
Next Post looks at fuel shortage in 1942 and founding of Ministry of Fuel and Power.
9th June 1720-When the Bubble Burst!
Collapse of major public companies through corruption and over-selling is no new phenomenon as the collapse of the British South Sea Company set up to trade with Spanish America in 1711 showed. It was to become a national scandal involving corruption between ministers and even the King.
Boom of stock price was followed by bust leaving many destitute, reminiscent of the Dot.Com collapse of 2000. Matters were only resolved when Robert Walpole transferred most of the stock to the Bank of England thus adding to National Debt.
Miser nursing his losses after collapse of South Sea Company.
It was as a result of the fiasco that the Government in its panic passed the South Sea Bubble Act today in 1720.
The Act banned the creation of Joint-Stock Companies without Royal Charter in a bid to prevent new investment companies and it was from that time that governments have been closely associated with control of economy and the ever burgeoning National Debt which has continued to spiral out of control.
Problems concerning the National Debt thus go back 100s of years and the roots of all political argument which 25 Prime Ministers haven’t solved. The public debt from 1900-2010 has risen to 700 billion, a steady rise not helped by two catastrophic wars: £150b (1980s) and £350b (2000) Projected Public Debt 1900-2015 is set to rise to £1300b. (1)
The great optimism of the 20thc regarding an ability to pay for increased welfare provision could mean that it was a dangerous experiment which could go drastically wrong after the the first day in January 1909 when for the first time Britain agreed to redistribute taxes to support old age provision and effectively created the founding of the welfare state albeit at a modest rate of a maximum of 5 shillings for those of 70.
After WWII welfare benefits were set to rapidly increase with the founding of the welfare state; the Butler Act of 1944 committed increased education provision as leaving age rose to 15 in 1947. However it was legislation bringing in Family Allowance and the National Health Service which are having a marked cost impact today along with pension commitments at a time when life expectancy has increased by 67% (48-80+) and pensionable age only marginally increasing.(2)
Alongside state expenditure, bureaucrats have risen to about half a million; when we ran a world empire there were a few thousand. There was an explosion of easy access to credit from the 1970s as borrowing money became cheaper and lower interest rates meant that government borrowing became cheaper, the era of spend-borrow-spend, which Prime Minister Callaghan said was not sustainable, but couldn’t control.
Not surprising government debt increased. Government 10 year Gilt yields peaked in the 1970s and in the 1980s Thatcher’s government had to pay 15% for 3 year Gilts ; by 2010 it had dropped to 2%.(Gecodia.com).
The biggest problem for the future is shown by the UK projected public debt which has risen dramatically from the 1970s, by 12 times to 2015. Pension provision alone commitment with public sector pensions set to rise to 5 trillion, 5 times the national economy.(3)
To give some idea how a government can be thrown into turmoil as a result of rising cost of borrowing we only need to look at Greece with interest rates at 1 % in 2009; in 2011 they had risen exponentially to 137%. (Bloomberg).
In 2014 Britain’s Bank Rate at 0.5% was historically rock bottom, when interest rates rise as they will to something historically more normal say to 5%, yields will rise, Gilt prices will fall which will impact on the value of the Gilts held by the Banks whose balance sheets will fall drastically, causing a banking crisis to rival that of 2008 as billions is wiped from capital holdings. (3)
Public Sector National Debt is a measure of how much the UK public sector owes at any given time. Public Sector Net Borrowing is the difference between total accrued receipts and total accrued (current and capital) expenditure over a period and is the public sector deficit.
(1) Source: ukpublicspending.co.uk
(2) The mortality average in 1909 was 48 so there were only about half a million people around to collect their pensions at the then pension age of 70.
It is calculated that we would need a retiring age of 115 to ensure the same ratio of increased longevity and benefit. In 1909 there were ten workers for every one pensioner compared with today’s ratio of two to one.
(3) The interest rate of Gilts when issued is called the coupon and reflects rates at time of issue and are redeemable at a set date. The price you pay for the Gilts rises and falls, with yield in inverse order. As maturity approaches the price of the Gilt will rise towards par with the yield lowering accordingly. The problem is if you wish to cash in early you might receive less than what you paid.
Ref: Total debt as % of GDP. Havers Analytics, Bank for International settlement; national banks, McKinsey Global Institute. Ref: Moneyweek.co.uk Ref: Spartacus, schoolnet.co.uk Old Age Pensions Act Ref. Pensions 100.co.uk/ hist of parliament.
Next Post looks at development of hops used in beer.
8th June 1821-Attack on Rotten Boroughs.
Cartoon in the style of Hogarth, of the blatant handing over of cash to get elected in the Rotten Boroughs. Edward Matthew Ward, Tate Gallery.
Corrupt electoral politics with its widespread bribery, the preserve of the rich,was portrayed in Dickens’ ‘Eatanswill’ (1). Cornwall was notorious for these ‘pocket boroughs’ which remained virtually nominated seats.
Today in 1821 the ‘rotten borough’ of Grampound was disenfranchised by Act of Parliament (2)
Grampound was a by-word for corruption with voters openly bragging of the 300 guineas they received, a corruption highlighted in the 1818 election, became disenfranchised, but the two seats which should have gone to Leeds, however for fear of increasing working class strength they went to Yorkshire County.
Old Sarum (3), Thetford and Castle Rising and fifteen Cornish parliamentary seats added between 1553-1584 were all ‘rotten boroughs‘, Fowey for instance had two MPs in the English Parliament (British after 1800) was controlled by the Rashleigh Family owners of most of the tenanted property.
Old Sarum which continued to send members to Parliament long after the site had been deserted when moving to Salisbury.
Many Cornish boroughs however survived the 1832 Reform Act such as Bodmin, St.Ives, Helston, Launceston, Liskeard Truro and Penryn and Falmouth; Lostwithiel was one which didn’t survive. Cornwall’s rotten boroughs, sold to the highest bidder, were an anomaly of the unreformed Commons with twenty boroughs electing two Members each, indeed to 1821 it had twenty-one boroughs with two Members, as well as two County MPs, so with 44 MPs, it had one fewer than Scotland.
Only a twentieth of the adult population could vote and qualifications varied widely. Some decayed towns had few electors, but still represented by two members. Some towns such as Birmingham and Manchester were unrepresented whilst there were 100 old ‘rotten boroughs’, many uninhabited, some of which had two members. Bute in Scotland had one person eligible to vote out of 14,000, so could vote for himself.
Dunwich in Suffolk was once the third biggest coastal town before being washed into the sea in the 1286 storm, was held until 1832 by Pitt the Elder and Lord Camelford who sold it to Earl Caledon for £60,000.
The franchise prior to 1832 in England and Wales counties the voting qualification was the possession of freehold property valued for the land tax at 40 shillings per-annum-the 40 shillings freeholder.
In the boroughs various qualifications applied: ‘scot and lot’, right of voting vested in inhabitant householders, paying poor rate; householder of ‘potwalloper’, was the right of voting vested in householders not receiving alms or poor relief, and burgage rights attached to property.
One ‘Pocket Borough’ was still going strong in the late 20thc when the Guinness Family had a stranglehold over the Essex constituency of Southend West since 1912 known as ‘Guinness on Sea’ when the hon Rupert Guinness, was first elected.
(1) Portrayed in The Pickwick Papers.
(2) (1&2 Geo IV C47).
(3) Painted by Constable.
Ref: Wiki: Unreformed Pocket Boroughs: Grampound (UK Parliament Constitution.
Ref: West Briton 11,18, 25 Feb. ; 3, 10, March; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 11 March 1820.
Ref: Andrew Roth Guardian Wed 31.1.2007
Ref: historyofparliament/online.org
Ref: Grampound-Borough. Published in the history of Parliament; House of Commons 1820-32. Ed DR Fisher 2009 Right of Election-freemen paying ‘scot and lot’ Qualified to Vote 69 in 1818 (CJ lxxv 228-9. Population of 668 (1821) pp 1835 xxiii 508.
Next Post we look at how pension provision has become an unbearable charge on national finances.
7th June 1832-Extension of the Franchise in the Great Reform Act.
Images of Benjamin (Dizzy) Disraeli), the first Prime Minister of Jewish descent. He became a Christian in 1817.
Disraeli ‘Dished’ the Liberals, in 1867 with his voting Reform Act which enfranchised much of the working class for the first time. Ever the consummate politician he acknowledged that change was inevitable, so in a volte face he beat the Liberals at their own game and so extended the provisions of the 1832 Act.
The new industrial middle-classes demand for parliamentary representation came to fruition today in 1832 when despite Tory opposition the first Reform Bill was passed.
What the bill highlighted was the reactionary nature of the by twenty-one Bishops, no friends of the masses who now found succour in Methodism. For these well-fed prelates on the Second Reading, along with Wellington leader of the hard line Tories had led opposition to the bill, and this in a background of riots and dangerous French revolutionary ideas.
The aristocratic Whig Cabinet however, pragmatically, thought reform would forestall a revolution and one of the campaigners for the bill, was the influential Spectator Magazine (1)
It was against this background that in 1831 saw the inception of a Cabinet Committee when Grey asked ‘Radical Jack’, first Earl of Durham to ‘take the Reform Bill in hand’ to satisfy public opinion. However it was still restricted to property and existing territorial divisions: reform, but not too much!
In the December of 1831, introduced for a 3rd time, the bill failed again in the Lords and the King refused to grant more favourable Peers and meanwhile the Tory Carlton Club was formed in 1832 under the patronage of the Tory leader Wellington specifically to oppose the Reform Bill.
Common sense prevailed and William IV was eventually forced into creating Peers supporting the cause, and asked Peel and Wellington to form a government, after the Whigs had resigned. Wellington however admitted defeat and the opposition benches were empty when the Bill was finally presented.
The 1832 Reform Act in fact, made small extensions to the franchise, removing only the worst of the abuses with some 143 seats, new manufacturing areas, now represented, those in Cornwall fell as many had been ‘Rotten Boroughs’. The electorate was increased by 50% including more free and leaseholders. One effect was to cause a spate of gerrymandering in marginal areas.
The Liberals saw that their solid supporters the tradesmen and manufacturers could now have the vote, thus many Freehold Land Societies were formed such as the 1865 Longton Freehold Society, and one Liberal area in Smethwick was nicknamed ‘Votingham’. The Tories replied by forming the Conservative Land Society.
After 1832 the other major reform was in 1867 when the Liberals decided to widen the franchise to 16% of adults, the Party however split and fell. Disraeli Leader of the Commons and Chancellor of the Exchequer had initially opposed the bill, but knew that the Liberals when back in Office would pass a Bill which paved the way for the Tory 1867 Representation of the People Act,
Report in the Morning Chronicle, London
Disraeli finally gets to the top of the ‘greasy pole’ to become Prime Minister in 1868.
So it was Disraeli who became the driving force under Prime Minister Edward 14 Earl of Derby in his third Administration to push for reform in a bill more democratic than the Liberals by carrying out a first redistribution of seats and doubling the electorate to about two million by lowering the property qualification. 1867 gave the vote to male voters of households in borough constituencies and male lodgers paying £10.
Opposition to reform saw many attempts to influence voters with cases of clergymen [Christian?] inflicting ‘spiritual injury’ on the stubborn, threats of withdrawal of tradesmen’s custom, not to mention buying debtors from prison and treating in public houses. There was thus pressure to be seen to be voting for those in influence- in 1857, 92% voted Tory, so the 1872 Gladstone’s Secret Ballot didn’t please everyone as it hid allegiance.
Other legislation followed: The Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act 1883, The Franchise Act 1884 and the Redistribution and Registration Act 1885, when the worst anomalies of seat distribution was rectified.
The Third Reform Act in 1884 extended the franchise by including rural labourers (in 1851 there were 1½ million employed in agriculture), extending the electorate to about 5 million, now most of the male population was enfranchised. In 1885 the Medical Relief Disqualification Act meant those who had accessed medical care from the Poor Law were no longer disqualified in elections.
The 1918 Representation of the People Act changed the electorate radically as now for first time, women over thirty could vote and so could many more working men. The Electorate Roll went from seven million to twenty million.
(1) Founded in July 5th 1828 (the original Spectator of 1711 was published by Steele and Addison). It was its first editor Robert Rintoul who coined the phrase: ‘The Bill, the whole Bill and nothing but the Bill’.
Ref: wikipedia/reform
Picture Ref: History of English Speaking Peoples.Churchill, P 2902, Chronicle Ref.
Picture Ref:Chronicle of Britain and Ireland.P.935. Hutton. Disraeli in Commons.
Next Post looks at the ‘Rotten Boroughs’.
6th June 1944. D-DAY-INVASION OF FORTRESS EUROPE.
One of the many headlines to appear in Britain on D-Day.
Operation Overlord continued from Neptune, as the actual movement inland eventually to Germany.
D-Day was announced at 9.32 am on that fateful Tuesday by BBC Radio’s Chief Announcer, John Snagge: ‘Early this morning the Allies began the assault on the north-western face of Hitler’s European Fortress’.
General Montgomery (Monty) was Chief of Land Forces for the landings under the American General Dwight Eisenhower as Supreme Commander who had to make the final, momentous decision.
Today, in 1944, was Operation Neptune: D-Day, having been postponed by General Eisenhower for 24 hours owing to bad weather, but not before detailed consultation with Group Captain Stagg, the meteorological co-ordinator. Never before or since has a weatherman had such an onerous duty.
The ‘Fog’ of battle.
It appears that the Meteorological Office along with the Admiralty and US Army forecasters were at odds as the Americans wanted to go on 5th June as did Montgomery, but considering the stormy weather this would have been disastrous. The ‘Met. Office’ even warned about the next day’s weather, which would have delayed action until very much later. Key to many decisions were Bletchley Park, code-breakers as they desperately collated enemy intelligence.
Once into action, wooden Horsa gliders towed by bombers filled the skies to gain possession of the flanks of the five designated beaches. One successful mission, but with dreadful sacrifice, was that of the 9th Parachute Regiment, on Sword Beach when as a prelude to the amphibious invasion, it was detailed to attack with the aid of gliders.
The intention was to land inside the perimeter of the Murville Battery, but they landed outside, thus having the task of getting over the fearsome defences before storming the guns under murderous fire. About 60 survived out of the initial 700.
In the previous May tented camps sprung up along roadsides and ports and rivers. American GI’s massed in Dorset and Devon destined to occupy the right flank of the invading force; Kent, Sussex and Hampshire were the preserve of the British and the Commonwealth: all were confined to camps in complete isolation.
The big guns open up. In the invasion ships of the Royal Navy and US included: 7 Battle Ships,5 Heavy Cruisers, 17 Light Cruisers, 135 Destroyers and Escorts, 3 Troop Transports. There were 508 other ships as well as Mine-Sweeper Flotillas.
On land, shells, aircraft, transport of all types were massed in thousands along with the British ‘Matilda’ and American ‘Sherman’ tanks, soon to be matched against the formidable German ‘Tiger’.
Involved were 4,000 landing craft and 745 ships carrying 185,000 troops. 3,467 heavy and 1,645 medium-heavy bombers flew in support along with 100,000 vehicles.The 97 Pathfinder Squadron was told, not to fly below 6,500 ft; All through the night the bombers flowed; returning they saw the great invasion armada below.
Bomber Command committed 100 planes to destroy each of the ten vital major coastal batteries. As they turned for home they saw huge formations of US planes following them into attack.
After Axis forces had surrendered in North Africa in May 1943, we were ready to invade Fortress Europe with its Atlantic Wall and fifteen thousand fortifications, stretching from Norway to Spain. Now the 1,000,000 American and British and Empire troops on standby were ready for action in the greatest invasion in history
The Teheran Conference of November 1943 had set the timing of the assault, when Churchill accepted that Britain would accept the Super-Powers decisions to invade Europe via France.
Churchill had worried over a Second Front which had been urged particularly by Stalin, fearful of heavy casualties and more committed to the Italian campaign and reaching Vienna (the ‘soft underbelly’, allied with heavy bombing. The choice of Normandy with its five assault beaches, code-named Utah, Omaha, Sword Juno and Gold was preferred instead of the more obvious Pas de Calais.
The ruse deceived the Germans and meant that 450,000 German troops were pinned down in various parts of Europe, and in the South of France not to be re-positioned for ten days following the landings. The crack 21 Panzers, as a result, were not brought in fast enough, ground to a halt and were soon knocked out.
The American Omaha Beach casualties were high owing to the loss of all but two 35-ton Sherman tanks out of 29, which should have preceded the infantry and in the process 2000 were killed. The tanks had sunk after being released three miles off-shore due to the strong current. It appears that a message, which had reached the other Beaches, about releasing the tanks onshore, owing to poor conditions didn’t reach Omaha.
Next Post we look at how Disraeli ‘dished’ the Liberals in mid-19thc reform.
5th June 1557
The notion of Courtly Love was inspired by the Arthurian legends of the age of chivalry and of the French troubadours of the early middle ages. In an age when marriage was for dynastic and material reasons there developed a romance outside of marriage as long as the rules of chastity were adhered to.
It was high class flirting in an age of ballads. The best known example in literature is when King Arthur’s wife Guinevere falls in love with Sir Lancelot and was a tradition continued by the sonnets of the age of Elizabeth Ist.
It was a romantic idea revived by Alfred Lord Tennyson in the 19thc with his Idylls of the King, tales of the court of King Arthur, of ladies in flowing dresses full of angst, a theme taken up by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painters such as Holman Hunt and Rossetti and later Waterhouse.
Later, Love Letters continued the romantic idea expressed in two World Wars when ‘sweethearts’ distantly communicated and perpetuated in popular music especially of the 1940s. Sometime later it disappeared and one reflects :is the age of romance dead in our modern world?
TODAY The first edition of Tottel’s Miscellany ‘Songes and Sonettes’ first appeared in 1557 and the first time that the sonnets of 4th Earl of Surrey and Thomas Wyatt the Younger had been printed, and constituted the most important of Elizabethan Miscellany. It was the upper-class 16thc equivalent of a pop-group album today.
Sketch of Thomas Wyatt the Elder by Hans Holbein the Younger.Royal Library Windsor.
The Miscellany was essentially a compilation of the works of the Ryght (sic) Honourable Lord Henry Howard late Earle (sic) of Surrey and Thomas Wyatt the Elder and others and comprised a volume of 271 poems not previously printed.
The new poetry was the property of the educated Court and gentry, but a wider public became curious to know more, so in 1557, one of the publishers of the day Tottel secured and published a number of them in the year before Elizabeth I came to the throne, thus marking a new era of Elizabethan literature.
Surrey was also the first in England to publish ‘blank verse’ when he translated the second and fourth books of Virgil’s Aeneid and he and Wyatt due to their translation of Petrarch’s sonnets, are known as the ‘Father of English Sonnets’.
The two poets developed the ‘new poetry’ in the reign of Henry VIII; Wyatt like Chaucer had visited Italy and was impressed with the beauty of their verse which contrasted with the rude and earthy poetry here of much of Chaucer and Langland’s Piers Plowman.
The new poets set a fashion at Court which was a necessary accomplishment for young nobles to create love poems after the French and Italian styles. The Italian tradition had come from Provence where in the middle ages poets and troubadours carried to excess the chivalry towards women enshrined in sweet lyric poetry reflecting the need in the close and intimate living conditions of those times for a seemly approach to romance.
Shakespeare carried on the tradition of blank verse in his sonnets, (ignoring arguments as to who actually wrote them), which are divided into those exhorting a youth of noble birth to marry and continue the family; the infatuation with the ‘Dark Lady’ and those devoted to others of both sexes. Also Shakespeare, ever the poetic scavenger, used many of the verses in Tottel’s Miscellany, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and in Hamlet and an anonymous poem in the 1594 Rape of Lucrece.
The Earl of Surrey-the first cousin of Henry’s fifth and executed wife Catherine Howard-was also executed on a charge of treason, owing to Henry’s paranoia that he was plotting against his son Edward inheriting the throne. Surrey was unfortunate being executed one day before the King died: his father (also under sentence of death), survived, as his execution was set for the day after.
Ref: lordsand ladies.org/courtly_love
Ref: classicalliterature.about.com/library
The next Post looks at D-Day.
4th June 1961
Early experiments in X-Rays-in the late 1880s-no clinical laboratories and no safety precautions as the scientist is looking through a Crooks’ Fluoroscope Tube without protection, and so well dressed!
My researches have uncovered hundreds of unknown ‘heroes’ in many areas of expertise and one of my commitments has been to bring their lives into a wider domain. History it seems can only cope with one name, or two in the case of DNA science (Watson and Crick), ignoring all those whose who prepared the ground for later newspaper headlines.
Today in 1961 William (Bill) Astbury the physicist and molecular biologist died after a lifetime of research which underpins much of what we know about the arrangement of atoms through the use of X-Ray crystallography. (1) He was a pioneer in the use of X-Rays to determine the structure of biological macro-molecules in living cells-the beginning of molecular biology.
In 1929 William Astbury arrived at Leeds as a textile physicist. The textile base on which Leeds had grown prospered on wool and other economic fibres and manufacturers were keen to maximise a competitive edge through science.
The new science of crystallography however had previously dealt with small and easily crystallised molecules but textiles with their large and not easily crystallised biological fibre molecules were more of a challenge.
However, Astbury thanks to developments in science and its concomitant research papers on the structure of proteins meant that Leeds University became the centre for textile research and the new molecular biology in the late 1930s which was a decade of great developments in artificial fibres such as nylon and rayon.
Astbury experimenting with an electron microscope dressed in suit and waistcoat de- riguer then for scientists. Astbury and his team in 1938 went on to produce the first X-Ray diffraction of DNA which in 1953 led to the discovery of double-helical DNA for which only Watson and Crick are remembered, forgetting the contribution of Astbury, The Braggs (Father and son), Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins.
(1) Astbury was born in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent on 25th February 1898, one of seven children, and destined to follow his family into the potteries. However the Head of his High School was a chemist and seeing his potential encouraged him to continue his studies.
There is a Blue Plaque at 189 Kirkstall Lane, Headingley, Leeds, in commemoration of Astbury.
Ref: Google.co.uk/crystallography Development.
Ref: Wikipedia/The Leeds Story-University of Leeds.
Ref: leeds.ac.uk/braggscentenary of discovery.
Photo Refs: uk.images.search.yahoo.com and wikipedia/X-Rays
Next Post is for the literary buffs when we look at early 16thc sonnets and look at whether Shakespeare might not have written his sonnets.
3rd June 1871-water,water,everywhere,nor any drop to drink…Coleridge.
Would you let your child drink dihydrogen monoxide? Hope so it’s only water!
Water fountain in Author’s garden, reminding us how we take water for granted now.
The total volume of water in the world remains constant, what changes is the quality and availability: this process of change is the water-cycle.(1)
Today in 1871 The Field Magazine, obviously not noted for its humanity recorded: ‘Among the poor in London there will always be filth, putrefaction, and all the essences of plagues and pestilence…To display clean things to a dirty man is to throw pearls before swine, who will certainly trample them in the filth of their stye’.(2)
To contradict this a more widely acceptable and positive view came in the same year, by the Royal Sanitary Commission: ‘That one of the first priorities of ‘civilised social life’ was a supply of wholesome and sufficient water for drinking and washing (3)
Liquid water (there are 3 states of water), is essential for all life and as a solvent and solute reactant bio-molecule structure in proteins, nucleic acids and cells, consequently water is the second most common molecule in the universe after hydrogen gas (H2). There are a 100 times as many water molecules in our bodies as the sum of all others put together.
Therefore anything which reduces the supply of water is serious as when we suffer droughts as in 1976, and 1995 which was one of the worst experienced in England and Wales and one of the hottest and driest and sunniest periods, since records began in 1727, and probably the warmest overall for 340 years.
It demonstrates how quickly, with extreme heat, the water supply can soon run out in large areas of the country, for 1995 started wet with good groundwater levels and it was regions relying on surface reservoirs which experienced problems. In West Yorkshire 100s of tankers had to shuttle water from the Kielder Reservoir; by August, 22 % of the population had hosepipe bans.
The quality of water in Britain deteriorated as the growth of industry took serious hold from the late 18thc., through contamination of rivers and wells, with cholera and typhoid outbreaks a regular occurrence, The decline had started with slaughterhouses, tanning and bleach works from early times and domestic waste of all types was dealt with in an haphazard way, all eventually finding its way into water.
There was no legislation before the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act, to compel house drains and sewers, so in the early 19thc household sewage and animal, including large amounts of horse, manure accumulated in street dung-hills. Middens and cess-pits where constructed, contaminated wells and drinking water until Dr Snow’s campaign in London brought to the authorities the notion that this indeed was the cause of widespread disease
One of the theories prevalent in the 19thc was the zymotic (Greek for ferment) disease notion that all the epidemic, endemic and contagious diseases were attributable to the ‘ferment’ caused by yeast in the body, which had been propounded by a certain Dr William Farr. This theory covered all the chief fever and contagious diseases such as typhoid, typhus, smallpox, scarlet fever, measles, erysipelas, cholera, whooping cough and diptheria. It was a theory which continued until the new bacteriology sciences took precedence later in the century.
With the growth of science as opposed to ‘quackery’, in the 20thc, matters had improved so much in London that ‘by 1921 the Board of Trade abolished the Metropolitan Water Examiner’ (Hardy 1984), and cholera became a thing of the past. Typhoid and gastrointestinal disorders declined rapidly as a result of cleaner water.
(1) (Gray 1994: P.43).
(2) (Quoted in Taylor 1946: P.30.
(3) (Hassan 1985:P.543.
Ref: Title comes from S.T.Coleridge The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 1798 Pt 2.
Ref: Wikipedia:water.
Ref:History of Water in England and Wales; John Hassan.
Ref: Metropolitan Drinking Fountains & Cattle Troughs Association.
Next post we look at X-Rays and crystallography inventions.
2nd June 1944
American B-17 bombers ready to be moved to airfields.
Of the unsung heroes prior to D-Day were the train crews who worked round the clock to keep the munitions moving down to the south coast.
Of particular note is the courage of driver and fireman of an ammunition train after one of the London and North East Railway (LNER) wagons caught fire going through Soham on the edge of the Fens, today.
After uncoupling the wagons, one blew up killing the fireman, and signalman nearby also injuring both driver and guard: the station was destroyed, but by the action of the engine crew the village of Soham was saved.
Preparations had started early in the war for a second front resulting in D-Day, on New Year’s Eve 1943 when Major Logan Scott-Bowden RE and his sergeant Bruce Ogden-Smith went to Gold Beach to collect samples of the sand which had large deposits of spongy peat in areas underneath, useless for landing heavy vehicles. Churchill optimistically had said that the Germans would be celebrating New Year to notice this undercover operation, the result of their findings being the development of ‘Bobbin’ tanks which unrolled reinforced canvas carpet over soft ground.
Pre-invasion measures produced great ingenuity in many inventors such as the production of many bizarre vehicles and devices, tailor-made for clearing mines and other obstacles, termed the ‘Hobart Funnies’- tank chain-flails, detachable ramps-named after their ‘Heath Robinson’ inventor, Major-General Sir Percy Hobart.
One idea fed to German Intelligence was false information of an invasion farther south in France by sending a General Montgomery look-alike Clifton James, a lieutenant in the Pay Corps, down to Gibraltar, (a hot-bed of German spies) his task to spread mis-information in the hearing of known spies, a ruse swallowed by the German High Command.(1)
The village that ‘died for England’ was Tyneham in Dorset used as a gunnery range in WWI. The villagers were given 28 days to evacuate in November 1943 and has never been returned from military use: name-pegs in the school, and crumbling church are poignant reminders of a thriving village. By April 1944 the Government banned visitors from within 10 miles of the coast, from the Wash to Land’s End, and thousands of pre-war holiday snaps were acquired to give information about the beaches in Normandy.
An area of South Devon, known as the South Hams, was requisitioned under Defence Regulations and Compensations Act (1939): 30,000 acres comprising parts of six parishes, 3,000 people 180 farms and village shops being evacuated for the training of US forces. The 750 families had six weeks to move lock, stock and barrel.
The idea of PLUTO (2) wouldn’t have happened but for Pit-Head Wheel makers, Thompson and Southwick, who engaged in war production, made the giant drum to house the oil-pipe which ran from Shanklin to Cherbourg and Dungeness to Boulogne. It required 1000 miles of tubes supplied by the Stanton Iron Works of Ilkeston.
Architect Basil Spence designed a fake oil storage tank made at Shepperton Studios and erected at Dover to make the Germans think that an oil pipe line ran to Calais suggesting that area as the landing point instead of Normandy. The creation of two enormous concrete harbours, as big as Dover and code-named Mulberry, had to be towed across the Channel to Arromanches was a monumental construction task involving 40,000 workers and completed in months.The idea had been conceived in a bathtub by Government advisor Professor. John Desmond on the Queen Mary bound for the Quebec Conference.
Deception techniques in Operation Fortitude were master-minded by Colonel Dave Strangeways who created a feint in the South East of England as though the landing was going to Pas de Calais. Dummy tanks and landing craft were also located in the area. Also dummy paratroops were dropped to add to confusion. Tinfoil (Windows) was dropped to give the illusion of air movement. The well-known French agent Gustave Bertrand was detained by the SIS (3) as there were fears he might have told the Germans about Operation Fortitude the invasion deception plan with its fake field armies related to two areas in Britain, North (centred on Edinburgh) looking to Norway, and South centred on the south of England) looking to Pas de Calais.
It was a time of many Operation ‘Codes’: Bodyguard created by London Controlling Section (LCS), after the 1943 Tehran Conference was aimed at deception for the eventual D-Day landings. Operation Quicksilver was deception as part of Bodyguard a broad strategy in military deception to support the invasion of Europe. Operation Fort was concerned with deception operations around Normandy.
(1) Film poster of 1958 starring Clifton-James.
(1) See film poster opposite.
(2) Pipeline under the Sea.
(3) Special Intelligence Service.
Ref: Max Hastings Review of ‘The Deceivers’ by Thaddeus Holt 13th Dec 2004 Daily Telegraph: ‘Our Tangled Wartime Webs’.
Ref: Wikipedia, D-day and Before.
Tomorrow we look at 19thc water provision.
1st June 1948-The Age of Austerity.
WELCOME TO JUNE’S DAILY BLOG: Coleridge’s ‘Leafy month of June’ named after the Roman god Juno the mother of the gods. Julius Caesar in his reforms increased the days to 30 from 29. It is Junius in the Julian Calendar and for the Anglo-Saxon’s: Sere-monath-the dry month.
Shrub of ‘Match me if you Can’ found in Bermuda, the Author’s ‘ second home’, where his son and family live. Author’s picture.
This Post looks at post-war petrol restrictions when today the Motor Spirit (Regulation) Act was passed into law when even in the April, three years after the war, motorists were restricted to 90 miles a month and when petrol intended for priority farm tractors and general haulage was dyed red.
However as always, ways were found round the legislation as the dye could be removed by straining through an old gas-mask, but only a small amount could be filtered. Some got over restrictions by filling bags with town gas, fitted on the roof of the car, which apart from making it difficult for driving, was dangerous, costly and bulky.
Police were empowered to run spot checks on the contents of motorists’ tanks.
In the second reading of the Motor Spirit Bill which was passed in the previous month, on Monday May 3rd 1948, Labour’s Mr Hugh Gaitskell, the Fuel Minister, said about 100,000 tons of petrol was lost to the black market every year.
Tory Mr Hudson from the opposition benches, called the possible sentences ‘savage’ and ‘ferocious’ as they proposed disqualification, imprisonment for up to two years and a fine of £1,000, and a further fine of half the value of the car.
Car ownership was gradually increasing as it became a possibility for more people and back in June 1945 the Manchester Guardian reported ‘that in spite of obstacles it’s clear that the number of private owner-drivers will substantially increase within the next few days.[the first summer after the war] And perhaps if summer ever does arrive it will bring with it a revival of the motoring weekend even if it means the reckless expenditure of one’s coupons on a single outing’.
It went on: ‘generally things are quiet and breakdowns due to tyres. Fleetwood [Lancs.] opened its car parks for the first time, but the invasion was nothing much. No accidents reported’: those were the days!
Ref: Punch Magazine Impressions of Parliament May 12th 1948.
Ref Guardian Archives June 1948.
Ref:House of Commons Hansard Reports 1948.
Pic Ref: P.182 Readers’ Digest, Yesterday’s Britain 1998.
Next Post looks at the lead up to D-Day 1944.
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