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Taking you through the year day by day, The Portsmouth Book of Days contains a quirky, eccentric, amusing or important event or fact from different periods of history, many of which had a major impact on, or reflect, the social and political history of England as a whole. Ideal for dipping into, this addictive little book will keep you entertained and informed. Featuring hundreds of snippets of information gleaned from the vaults of Portsmouth's archives, it will delight residents and visitors alike.
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JOHN SADDEN
Acknowledgements are due to the authors of the books and magazines and newspaper articles, that have been plundered for this volume. It is hoped that those who are curious or intrigued by the brief stories, facts, ephemera and trivia presented here will seek out the sources, the majority of which are available for consultation in the Local Studies section of the Portsmouth Central Public Library. Thanks are due to the staff at Portsmouth City Council Libraries and Museum service, Portsmouth Grammar School Library, Hampshire County Library service and to M.C. Sadden and Tim Reynolds.
The Julian Calendar was in use up until Wednesday 2 September 1752. The following day the Gregorian Calendar was adopted making the date Thursday 14 September 1752. The dates in this book before and after this shift correspond to the respective calendars.
John Sadden, 2011
First published in 2011
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2012
All rights reserved
© John Sadden, 2012
The right of John Sadden, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 8587 4
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Original typesetting by The History Press
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1831: On this day the name Landport was used for the first time. The area was formerly known as Halfway Houses, named after some houses that stood halfway between Portsea and St Mary’s Church. (City of Portsmouth Records of the Corporation [1827-1979], ed. W. Gates, G. Singleton Gates, G.E. Barnett and V. Blanchard, Dr R. Windle, Dr R.C. Riley)
1856: Portsea (later Kingston) Cemetery was opened. Among the first people interred were six Dockyard workers killed when a steam-engine boiler exploded. The greater part of the red-hot boiler, which weighed a ton, was hurled 100ft and then rebounded another 100ft towards the building slip. The force of the explosion demolished the boiler shed, sending the roof 60ft into the air, and burst the wall of the adjoining building, causing wounds ‘of a most frightful description’. The funeral was attended by an estimated 20,000 people, and the deceased were buried in a communal grave. (Daily News, Hampshire Telegraph)
1805: The Hampshire Library opened its doors in St George’s Square to the Portsmouth gentry, who paid a 2 guinea joining fee and an annual subscription of £1 2s. The rest of the population had to wait seventy-eight years before a public library service was established. (Hampshire Telegraph)
1887: On this bitterly cold winter’s day, soldiers of the 2nd Battalion Worcestershire Regiment were sitting around the fire in the basement of Cambridge Barracks. At nine o’clock, leaking gas ignited and the men were blown to pieces. Above them, the explosion took out a side of the barracks, sending men and debris onto the parade ground. The upper two floors collapsed, trapping others. Men from other barracks hastened to help in the attempt to dig out survivors by lantern light. Ambulances were summoned but frozen roads prevented the horses getting a footing and so the soldiers pulled the ambulances themselves, to and from the hospital, on Lion Terrace.
The coroner’s inquest recorded a verdict of accidental death on the five men killed, but the jury added a rider that the military authorities’ procedures over the supervision of gas were ‘most unsatisfactory’. A subsequent military court of inquiry blamed the Quartermaster and a non-commissioned officer, who were both demoted. The under-floor gas pipes were found to be corroded with rust and the Portsea Island Gas Company was found negligent for not maintaining them properly. (Pall Mall Gazette; A History of Cambridge Barracks by C. Smith, 2001)
1801: A new flag, the Union Jack, was hoisted on the saluting platform for the first time. (Annals of Portsmouth by W.H. Saunders, 1880)
1961: Heckling at the King’s Theatre forced the closure of the gallery for the season as ‘teenage hooligans’ upset the actors at the pantomime. (City of Portsmouth Records of the Corporation, ed. Gates, Singleton-Gates, Barnett, Blanchard, Windle, Riley)
1665: Commissioner of the Dockyard, Thomas Middleton, wrote to Samuel Pepys:
Great want of seamen. The new ship is to be launched next month and not one man belonging to her except the officers whose work is to look upon them. It is hard to make bricks without straw but am content, the small time I have to live to serve my King and country, though I would rather be buried alive than put upon impossibilities.
Middleton appeared to dislike Portsmouth, later writing:
For my part to you as a frinde I declayre I intend not to make Portsmouth my habitation if I can avoid it. ‘Tis Trew if the Kinge command me to live underwater if it weare possible I would and must do it, but if I can anyway with the preservation of my reputation avoid it, I shall not live heare for the rent of Hampsheere.
(Portsmouth through the Centuries by W. Gates, 1931)
1907: An inquest was held on the death of two lifeboatmen who were washed up on Southsea beach after the Ryde lifeboat capsized in a heavy squall. (The Times)
1958: Sir Edwin Alliott Verdon-Roe, aircraft designer and manufacturer, died in St Mary’s Hospital, Portsmouth, having resided at Rowlands Castle.
On learning of the successful flight of the Wright brothers in 1903, Roe decided to devote himself to powered flight.
By 1910, he had set up one of the world’s first aircraft building manufacturers, A.V. Roe & Co.(AVRO), in Manchester. In 1911 he designed the first enclosed cabin aeroplane and established a British flying record of seven and a half hours. The following year he designed and built the famous Avro 504, which in its improved form became the best-known military aeroplane of the First World War. In 1917 it became the standard trainer and was used in Gosport at the pioneering School of Special Flying at Grange airfield. It was also used as a bomber, carrying out the first ever air raid on Zeppelin sheds at Friedrichshafen in 1914. (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
1834: The Marianne docked at Portsmouth, carrying 212 Polish soldiers who had escaped Tsarist Russian aggression. The refugees were housed in local barracks and were ‘determined to make the best of their situation, seeking out employment, companionship and a degree of independence’. Sympathy for their plight was widespread, helped by explanatory newspaper articles headlined: ‘The Suffering, Brave Poles’. Each man was given a small government allowance until, it was explained, they might achieve ‘the dearest object of their existence, the liberty of their country’. When one refugee died, the Royal Marine Band played in the procession to Mile End Cemetery (now the site of the Continental Ferryport), and sympathetic crowds turned out.
Novelist Walter Besant, who spent his early years in Portsmouth at this time, later described their poverty in By Celia’s Arbour, and how they survived on bread and cabbage soup. Over time, many of the men found employment and became self-sufficient, integrating into the local community, a number marrying into Portsmouth families. (Settlers, Visitors and Asylum Seekers by P. MacDougall, 2007; Hampshire Advertiser; Hampshire Telegraph)
1816: The last remaining French prisoners, captured during the Napoleonic wars, were sent home from Portchester Castle. (History of Portsmouth by W. Gates, 1900)
1800: The borough’s bakers went on strike over the price of bread. At that time, the price was controlled by the magistrates, and, bowing to the pressure, they revoked the Assize of Bread, allowing the bakers to charge whatever they liked. The price immediately shot up, and meetings were held by local people unable to feed their families at which there were at least seven arrests. Posters appeared, calling on the rich to, ‘Repent before too late, the time is drawing nigh … You grind us so our children can’t get bread, consider this before you lose your head … The halter’s made, The time is near at hand, That you must make, Your exit from this land.’
Three halters were suspended at the Lion Gate in Portsea, with a notice proclaiming, ‘A caution. To the farmers, millers and bakers … Each of you take your choice. The greatest rogue, May have the greatest hoist.’
By August the price of bread had gone up again and ‘formidable demonstrations’ took place in St George’s Square. (see September 1st) By October, following a successful harvest, the price was reduced. (Portsmouth by A. Temple Patterson, 1976; History of Portsmouth by W. Gates, 1900)
1919: On this day in 1919, 300 Portsmouth men who had just been released from enemy POW camps during the First World War were entertained in the Town Hall by local people, who had organised food and clothing parcels to be sent to the men during their incarceration.
Stories had appeared in the press during the war that POWS were being systematically starved by their German captors and immediately a ‘comforts fund’ was set up to pay for food parcels. By the end of 1916 there were 180 POWs from Portsmouth who were receiving these parcels, including survivors who had been picked up after the Battle of Jutland. Parcels continued to be sent throughout 1917 and 1918 when there were severe food shortages. In all, nearly 17,000 parcels were dispatched containing, amongst other things, OXO cubes, tinned meat and Huntley & Palmer biscuits. (Keep the Home Fires Burning by J. Sadden, 1990; City of Portsmouth Records of the Corporation, ed. Gates, Singleton-Gates, Barnett, Blanchard, Windle, Riley)
1688: Following a petition from the Mayor and Corporation, William of Orange ordered that no soldiers were to be billeted with inhabitants until the barracks were full, and that 8d a week should be paid for their accommodation and upkeep. (City of Portsmouth Records of the Corporation, ed. Gates, Singleton-Gates, Barnett, Blanchard, Windle, Riley)
1869: Following an eight-year life of crime centred on the Marylebone area of Portsmouth, just east of the Town Hall, a notorious ‘rough’ who went by the name of ‘Punch Cubby’ was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for stealing potatoes. The potatoes had disappeared from a field in Elm Grove cultivated by Josiah Simmons, a market gardener, and were valued at 5s. John Tilbury, aka ‘Punch Cubby’, and an accomplice were arrested by a policeman on the beat.
Born in around 1846, John Tilbury had tried the patience of local magistrates since he was a boy, having been convicted on numerous occasions for the theft of food, including bread, pork and rabbits. Two years earlier, Tilbury had served twelve months in prison with hard labour for his part in the ‘tin-kettle’ killing (see May 30th), but was back before the Bench within two months of his release. (Hampshire Telegraph)
1923: Wireless research workers were reported to be searching for an explanation as to why broadcasts in the new medium from Manchester were heard with ease in Portsmouth, but those from London were lost in the ether. (The Times)
1450: The Bishop of Chichester, Adam de Moleyns, Keeper of the King’s Privy Seal, completed a service at the Domus Dei (later the Garrison Church).
The Bishop had been dispatched to the town to pay soldiers and sailors a part of their outstanding wages, but a group of angry sailors arrived at the church, not having had anything to live on for some time. They remonstrated with the Bishop, also accusing him of being partially responsible for the recent loss of Normandy, which had been given away as part of Henry VI’s marriage negotiations. They dragged him out of the church and beat him so severely that he died. Before being killed, the Bishop is said to have alleged that the King’s Chief Minister, the Earl of Suffolk, had embezzled large amounts of money which is why the men had not been paid. For this heinous crime against the church, the town was excommunicated by the Pope, and it was nearly sixty years before this was lifted after an elaborate ceremony of penance. (War of the Roses by M. Miller, 2003)
1941: At seven o’clock, the thirty-first air raid on the city began. Incendiaries and high explosive bombs fell in waves over the next seven hours, dropped by 300 raiders. Three batches of incendiaries fell on the Guildhall and a high explosive bomb hit the roof, which collapsed. The Electricity Station was hit, cutting off all power to the city, and sixty-three water mains were broken. The main shopping areas in Palmerston Road, King’s Road and Commercial Road were in ruins and other buildings that were destroyed included six churches, three cinemas, the Eye and Ear Hospital, part of the Royal Hospital, Clarence Pier, the Hippodrome, the Dockyard School, Connaught Drill Hall, Central Hotel, the Royal Sailors’ Rest and the Salvation Army Citadel in Lake Road. Three thousand homes were made uninhabitable. Altogether, there were 2,314 fires. A direct hit on an underground air-raid shelter killed forty-seven people. Several ARP Wardens’ Posts were damaged or destroyed. A total of 171 people were killed and 430 injured in those seven hours. (City of Portsmouth Records of the Corporation, ed. Gates, Singleton-Gates, Barnett, Blanchard, Windle, Riley)
1660: Samuel Pepys wrote:
This day comes news, by letters from Portsmouth, that the Princess Henrietta is fallen sick of the measles on board the London, after the Queen and she was under sail. And so was forced to come back again into Portsmouth harbour; and in their way, by negligence of the pilot, run upon the Horse sand. The Queen and she continue aboard, and do not intend to come on shore till she sees what will become of the young Princess. This news do make people think something indeed, that three of the Royal Family should fall sick of the same disease, one after another.
(The Administration of the Navy from the Restoration to the Revolution by J. Tanner, English Historical Review Vol. XII,1897)
1905: John Jacques was born. He was Chief Executive of the Portsea Island Mutual Co-operative Society (PIMCO) from 1945 to 1965, during which time he helped double membership and increase sales six-fold. His forward thinking led to the introduction of Britain’s first self-service store at Albert Road in 1948, three years before Tesco caught on. This enabled customers to choose their own products from shelves rather than rely on an assistant to retrieve them from behind a counter. (A Pictorial History of Portsea Island Mutual Co-operative Society Ltd [1873-1998] by Community Link Associates)
1948: Popular Edwardian music hall comedienne and singer, Daisy Dormer, who had been born Kezia Stockwell in 1883, the daughter of a Portsmouth Dockyard worker, died in 1947. On this cold January morning, the details of her will were published. To the Commanding Officer of the RN Barracks she left ‘my largest theatrical hamper containing my glamorous clothes, character and comedy dresses for the use of the ratings of any ship based in Portsmouth.’ She added, ‘And I express the hope that they will be useful in connection with the amateur theatrical entertainments which they provide.’ (The Times)
1740: Mary Lacy, lesbian sailor and shipwright, was born. In 1759 she went to sea as William Chandler and, in 1763, began an apprenticeship as a shipwright at the Dockyard. According to her autobiography, rumours forced Mary to admit to two fellow workers, who had been chosen to check out her manhood, that she was a woman, but the men swore to keep her secret, and told a crowd of Dockyard workers that ‘he is a man-and-a-half to a great many’. A voice from the crowd said, ‘I thought Chandler could not be so great with his mistress if he was not a man.’(Female Tars by S. Stark, 1998)
1869: Janet Steel, a girl of around fourteen years of age, went shopping in Arundel Street and Commercial Road. She visited ten shops, and by the end of her spree was laden with goods, including a box of figs, a silk necktie and an ermine muff. On this day in 1869, the ‘extensive swindling of Landport tradesmen’ was reported in the local press. On visiting the shops, Steel had ordered lengthy lists of goods to be delivered to a respectable resident at a local address, to whom the bill was to be charged. Before leaving, she asked to carry one item with her. Subsequently, the deliveries were returned to the traders, the addresses, if not the respectable residents, being fictitious. (Hampshire Telegraph)
1871: The first Portsmouth School Board was elected, its mission being to provide schools ‘for children who at an early age are compelled to earn their own living and to amend the consequences of past neglect’. At the core of ‘the system of instruction’ were the compulsory subjects of Bible Reading, Reading and Grammar, Writing and Arithmetic. Boys were to have Drill, girls and infants Needlework. (Portsmouth’s Schools 1750-1975 by P. Galliver, 2011)
1944: Lieutenant Worth and Surgeon-Lieutenant Fowler of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve attended a séance in a darkened room above Homer’s Drug Store at No. 301 Copnor Road. The medium was a Scottish woman, Helen Duncan, who had previously been prosecuted as a fake. She had come to the attention of the Navy after having suggested she had knowledge of the sinking of HMS Barham before it had been officially announced.
A white figure appeared from a cabinet, purporting to be Duncan’s spirit guide, Albert, who summoned up what was claimed to be Lieutenant Worth’s sister. This surprised Lieutenant Worth as his sister was an ambulance driver in London. Another spirit guide called Peggy appeared and sang Loch Lomond before producing an ectoplasmic cat, which meowed, an ectoplasmic parrot, which said ‘Pretty Polly’, an ectoplasmic rabbit and various human spirits, including that of a policeman. After the séance, Lieutenant Worth was given four photographs which purported to show spirits. He took the photographs to a real policeman, who began an investigation that led to Duncan being tried at the Old Bailey and imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. (The Trial of Mrs Duncan by C. Bechhofer Roberts, 1945)
1948: Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, who supported the creation of an Arab-ruled state in western Palestine, signed a treaty with Iraq on board HMS Victory in the Dockyard. Bevin undertook to withdraw British troops from Palestine to allow for immediate Arab occupation of the territory. This became known as the Portsmouth Treaty. Bevin was also reported to have sold the Iraqi foreign minister 50,000 tommy-guns, and the meeting ended with optimism about the future of Palestine. (Ernest Bevin, Foreign Secretary by A. Bullock, 1967)
1841: Children’s author and hymn writer Sarah Doudney was born at Portsea. Her father ran a candle and soap manufacturing business at Mile End. She began writing verse and prose as a child and, when she was fifteen, wrote The Lesson of the Water-Mill, a song which became well known in Britain and the United States. From 1871 she published a series of pious children’s novels, including The Great Salterns (1875), which was set on Portsea Island. Some of her hymns are still occasionally sung, including ‘Sleep on, beloved, sleep and take thy rest and Saviour, now the day is ending’. She died in 1926. (Portsmouth Novelists by D. Francis, 2006, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
1699: Mr Henry Seager complained about the conduct of Mr Thomas Ridge in a written deposition:
Henry Seager, gent, one of the justices of the Peace for ye said Burrough maketh oath. That severall days and times within Three months last past att Portesmouth aforesd Mr Thomas Ridge hath abused this deponent (Seager) by bidding him this deponent kiss his breech, and after giving him the lye that he said Mr Ridge did not give a f--t for this deponent and that this deponent might goe and acquaint the Society of itt, and further this deponent maketh oath that about Wednesday night last … [he] told this deponent that … he was a Rascall and a Villaine, and then gave this deponent opprobeious languadge.
What had upset Mr Ridge is not known. He was the son of a local brewer and Mayor and the Ridge family were described as ‘of very ancient and respectable standing in the Borough’, a status that was seemingly unaffected by Thomas’s behaviour (see February 15th).There is no record of Mr Seager having kissed Mr Ridge’s bottom. (Extracts from ‘Records in the possession of the Municipal Corporation of the Borough of Portsmouth’ by Robert East, 1891)
1772: Charles Chubb was born in Fordingbridge. He set up a business in Portsea as a locksmith and patented the detector lock in 1818. (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
1906: Successful author, journalist, illustrator and eccentric, Fred T. Jane, stood as an independent ‘Navy before Party’ candidate for the Portsmouth seat in the General Election. He came last. In 1899, Jane was commissioned by Pictorial World to cover naval manoeuvres and an inspection of the combined fleets at Spithead by the German emperor Wilhelm II. Jane was able to sketch nearly 100 ships. Nine years later, he published Jane’s All the World’s Fighting Ships (shortened to Jane’s Fighting Ships in 1905), with details of all major surface warships; this was to be used as a ship recognition and intelligence aid by all sides in many future naval conflicts.
Aircraft, television, and laser holograms were recognisably foreshadowed in a series of Jane’s illustrations in the Pall Mall Magazine in 1894-5. He also became a successful novelist with Blake of the Rattlesnake (1895), followed by several sciencefiction titles, including The Incubated Girl (1896), To Venus in Five Seconds (1897), and The Violet Flame (1899), which featured an armament with the characteristics of a nuclear weapon. Fred T. Jane died of a heart attack following severe influenza at No. 26 Clarence Esplanade on 8 March 1916. (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, City of Portsmouth Records of the Corporation, ed. Gates, Singleton-Gates, Barnett, Blanchard, Windle, Riley)
1876: Charles Sewell, aged twelve, appeared before magistrates charged with stealing a pair of boots from Mr Budden’s bootshop in Commercial Road. At a time when many children went barefoot through poverty, the temptation to acquire footwear in the middle of winter must have been great, a fact perhaps recognised by the court. The Clerk expressed surprise when it emerged that not only had the boots been displayed outside the shop, but that nobody was employed to watch over them. The case was reported under the headline, ‘Another theft through the exposure of goods’. However, less than two hours after stealing the boots, the boy returned to Commercial Road to try to pawn them, which was to be his undoing. Whether this was his intention all along, or whether they didn’t fit (they were men’s) is not known.
Barefoot children were a common sight on the streets of Portsea well into the twentieth century. In the Portsmouth-based novel, Mudlark, set during the First World War, the theft of boots by two barefoot mudlarks sparks a tragicomic chain of events. And even into the 1920s, the Portsmouth Brotherhood, based at Arundel Street Wesleyan Church, was running a charitable Boot Fund. (Mudlark by J. Sedden, 2005; Hampshire Telegraph)
1901: Elizabeth Rowland of No. 24 Prince Albert Street, Eastney received this letter from George Hill, aged twenty-two, whom she had been seeing while her soldier husband was serving in India. Hill was a marine at Eastney Barracks until he was convicted of stealing there. He was later arrested for murdering a man on a train during an armed robbery.
Dearest Lizzie,
It makes my heart bleed, as I am writing these few lines, to think I shall never see you again, and that you will be alone and miserable now … I always loved you dearly … I am truly sorry and penitent for having, in an evil moment, allowed myself to be carried away into committing … murder … I went and purchased a revolver, so that when I came down to Portsmouth … I could end both our lives if I had not been successful in obtaining money from my father. I know you were not happy at home, nor I either, for I have been very unhappy of late, mostly on account of the false charges brought against me at barracks. God knows I was as innocent as the dead. I shall get hung now … I believe I was mad; I know I was drunk. God help me! My days are numbered, but I will bear it unflinchingly.
Your wretched and broken-hearted sweetheart,
Geo. H. Hill
Hill was hanged at Wandsworth Prison on 19 March 1901. (Old Bailey Proceedings, The Times)
1899: Portsmouth magistrates petitioned Parliament, urging them to repeal a law which had just been passed enabling people to opt out of being vaccinated. The petition stated that the outcome would be to ‘nullify the incalculable benefits [that] have resulted in the prevention of the dangerous, loathsome and disfiguring disease, Small Pox’. (Hampshire Telegraph)
1934:The Times reported that two submariners who had just returned from China had missed their train from Waterloo to Portsmouth because they had left their group to ‘seek refreshments’. Their group, which numbered 150, were due back at the submarine depot at Fort Blockhouse in Gosport.
The two submariners immediately hailed a cab and drove to Croydon, where they chartered an aeroplane which flew them to the newly-opened Portsmouth Airport. They then phoned Portsmouth Harbour Station to hear that their fellow submariners had just arrived and were about to cross the harbour. They then engaged a taxi to drive them the 6 miles from Portsmouth Aerodrome to Gosport ‘and had the satisfaction of joining their comrades as they marched into Fort Blockhouse’. (The Times)
1899: It was reported that there was at least one dog poisoner at large in Portsmouth. Though ‘thoroughly reprehensible and cruel’, the Hampshire Telegraph blamed irresponsible dog owners for keeping ‘half-bred brutes that bark and snap at everyone they meet’ and howl through the night, provoking other residents. (Hampshire Telegraph)
1895: On this busy day for Mayor Thomas King in 1895, he opened the town’s first public museum in the High Street (previously the Town Hall). In his speech he said that Portsmouth had lost out because of its tardiness in starting the museum, suggesting that many artefacts had been lost to other towns because of the delay. The first curator, local historian William Saunders, thanked the Mayor before he left for his next engagement. Arriving in Arundel Street, the Mayor opened the new Technical Institute, where it was reported that 800 students had already enrolled for courses. In his speech, he expressed regret that a larger, purpose-built building had not been commissioned. The local MP added that, through education, ‘they were affording the poorest boy in the land the opportunity of rising to the highest position’. The day ended with a banquet at the Town Hall to celebrate the launches. (City of Portsmouth Records of the Corporation, ed. Gates, Singleton-Gates, Barnett, Blanchard, Windle, Riley; Hampshire Telegraph)
1805: Jane Austen wrote a letter addressed to her brother, Captain Francis Austen on HMS Leopard, at Portsmouth:
My dearest Frank,
I wrote to you yesterday, but your letter to Cassandra [Jane’s sister] this morning, by which we learn the probability of you being by this time at Portsmouth, obliges one to write to you again, having unfortunately a communication so necessary as painful to make to you. – Your affectionate heart will be greatly wounded, and I wish the shock could have been lessened by a better preparation; – but the event has been sudden, and so must be the information of it. We have lost our Excellent Father. An illness of only forty hours carried him off yesterday morning between ten and eleven…
At this time, Jane was living in Bath and working on a novel, The Watsons, about an invalid clergyman with little money and his four unmarried daughters. Austen appears to have stopped work on the novel after her father’s death because her personal circumstances resembled those of her characters too closely for her comfort.
(Jane Austen’s Manuscript Letters in Facsimile, ed. J. Modet, 1990)
1821: At ten to seven in the morning, the valet of Portsmouth’s Commander-in-Chief, entered his dressing room. Admiral Sir George Campbell was lying on the floor. Beside him was a discharged pistol.
Campbell had been appointed Commander-in-Chief in 1818 and was coming to the end of his term of office. His abilities were highly rated by Lord Nelson and he was a friend of the Prince Regent. At the coroner’s inquest, a verdict of ‘lunacy’ was returned. (Gentleman’s Magazine)
1875: Mr Baker was a speculative builder who began erecting houses at Stamshaw. Unfortunately, Baker did not deposit plans for his development with the Sanitary Authority and was fined £1 by magistrates. The local authority then maintained that the site was not fit to build on because it had been used as a tip and lacked drainage. They demanded that the work be stopped. This prompted Baker to speed up development, which was only stopped by legal embargo. Prolonged litigation ensued which was only finalised two years later. At stake was the issue of the power of a local authority against the freedom of an individual to do what he wished to make money. In an editorial on this day in 1878, the Hampshire Telegraph made clear that ‘the battle was worth fighting, and the public, for whose protection alone the bye-laws are framed, have good reason to rejoice at the victory that has been won’. (Hampshire Telegraph)
1826: A ‘numerous and respectable meeting of the inhabitants of the Borough of Portsmouth’ took place at the Beneficial Society’s Hall in Kent Street, Portsea. Built in 1784 as a free school for boys, the building was also used for meetings, social functions and entertainments.
The meeting, with Mayor David Spice in the chair, resolved to petition the Houses of Lords and Commons with an issue that troubled many people across the country. ‘Slavery,’ the meeting decided, ‘under any form or circumstance, however mild or plausible, is contrary to the dictates of justice, as well as repugnant to sound and enlightened policy and that the principles and benign spirit of Christianity are equally opposed to its inhumanity.’
Though slave trading had been abolished in 1807, ‘a state of the most rigorous and cruel slavery’ still continued in the British colonies in the West Indies. The condition of the slave population, the meeting heard, ‘remains as wretched and merciless as ever’.
Perhaps mindful that some people are blind to moral imperatives that lack an economic justification, the meeting added to its petition that ‘free labour is more productive and advantageous than slave cultivation’. (Hampshire Telegraph)
1881: The Evening News published this editorial, prompted by some inhabitants’ reactions to the great snowstorm which brought 5ft-deep snowdrifts, the suspension of all public transport and an appeal for money to help those in distress:
There still exist numbers of ignorant and exasperating fanatics, thick-headed men with leather lungs and the epidermis of a rhinoceros, who set common sense, science and the Register General’s returns equally at defiance, and bellow forth their delight in this ‘good old-fashioned weather’… it never strikes them … that those who suffer from insufficient food or clothing, the aged, the very young, the delicate, the ailing can feel no such pleasant reaction, but succumb to the icy touch of winter as do flowers and vegetation. Cold is death.
The Council spent £1,100 in helping to clear the roads of snow, and troops from local barracks assisted in transporting essential mail. Over £700 was raised by public subscription for those in need. However, this was not enough to prevent the local coroner having to deal with an increase in cases of hypothermia. (Evening News, Portsmouth; City of Portsmouth Records of the Corporation ed. Gates, Singleton-Gates, Barnett, Blanchard, Windle, Riley)
1941: Mr George Balfour, who was born in Portsmouth in 1872, and founded the company Balfour, Beatty & Co. Ltd in 1909, died on this day in 1941. Balfour played an important role in the development of the electrical industry in the UK, and served as Conservative and Unionist MP for Hampstead from 1918 until his death. (The Times)
1923: Mary Pelham was murdered in her home off Queen Street. Mary lived in one of the numerous slum homes in Portsea. During the day she was a familiar figure selling flowers in the streets, and at night she sold the use of her body. Her body was found on her blood-soaked bed with head injuries, and a scarf around her neck with which her murderer had tried to strangle her.
Mary Pelham had been seen with a sailor shortly before her death and a ticket for the Royal Sailors’ Rest was found near her body. The Navy arranged an identity parade of 3,500 sailors and, perhaps not surprisingly, the witness was unable to identify the killer. (History in Hiding by A. Triggs, 1989)
1913: Michael Ripper was born in Portsmouth, the son of Dockyard worker Harold Ripper. In his spare time Ripper senior was an elocutionist, who published a book, Vital Speech in 1928.
Michael Ripper attended Portsmouth Grammar School and took part in school productions. The family became close friends with a man who was to become one of Britain’s greatest character actors, Alastair Sim. The Ripper’s Alhambra Road house was regularly filled with Sim’s talk and love of poetry, drama and the theatre. In 1928, Michael successfully auditioned at the Central School of Speech and Drama.
In 1952, Michael’s promising theatrical career was brought to an end when he underwent an operation for a thyroid condition which left him unable to project his voice. He devoted himself to film and television work and appeared in over 200 films and television series, but is most famous as a stalwart of the Hammer Horror studio’s output, appearing in more of their films – thirty-four – than any other actor. (Michael Ripper Unmasked by D. Pykett, 1999)
1932: Peter Cheeseman, described as one of the most influential theatre directors of the second half of the twentieth century, was born in Portsmouth. (The Guardian)
1805: The first motor car was seen in Portsmouth. It was a steam carriage capable of carrying twelve people. (History of Portsmouth by W. Gates, 1900)
1929: The first ‘talking’ film to be shown in Portsmouth, The Singing Fool, was screened on this date at the Plaza cinema at Bradford Junction. (Cinemas of Portsmouth by R. Brown, 2009)
1956: An eighteen year old who had been called up for National Service, and had been in the Army for eight days, was found dead between the railway lines at Portsmouth. (The Times)
1909: Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb, naval frogman, was born in Streatham. During the war, Crabb was active on bomb disposal duties, combating underwater saboteurs and disabling weapons attached to ships’ hulls. He was awarded the George Medal and the OBE and retired, but reappeared at Portsmouth on 17 April 1956 with a member of the Secret Intelligence Service and booked a room at the Sally Port Hotel. He went to HMS Vernon (on the site of Gunwharf Quays) where he prepared for a dive to investigate the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze berthed in Portsmouth Harbour. He disappeared on this mission, prompting many imaginative theories as to what had happened to him. (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)
1909: Victor Grayson MP was attending the ninth annual national Labour Party Conference at Portsmouth Town Hall, alongside the socialist playwright George Bernard Shaw. After a packed morning which included discussions on the right to work, hereditary privileges, old age pensions and the problem of the unelected Lords, Grayson was summoned outside by two gentlemen who offered to take him for a spin around town in their motor car to take in the sights. Grayson relished the opportunity, but very soon became suspicious when he discovered he was being driven out of town and into the countryside ‘at a dangerous speed’. At the wheel was Fred T. Jane, who had very effectively prevented Grayson from delivering a speech to the conference that afternoon.
Victor Grayson later went on to expose Lloyd George’s selling of honours, which at that time was considered bad form as it was too brazen. Grayson continued to investigate high-level corruption and was beaten up in The Strand at the beginning of September 1920. This did not dissuade him from continuing to threaten to reveal the extent of the corruption, and it is widely believed that when he disappeared on the 28 September that he was murdered to prevent any more revelations. (The Strange Case of Victor Grayson by R. Groves, 1975; The Times)
1910: Cosmo Lang, who had served as vicar of Portsea from 1896 to 1901, returned to St Mary’s Church as ArchBishop of York. His rapid elevation to this position, within eighteen years of his ordination, was unprecedented and, in 1928, he was appointed ArchBishop of Canterbury. During Lang’s visit he preached to a male-only congregation as President of the Church of England Men’s Society and then spoke at a meeting in the Town Hall.
As vicar of Portsea, Lang supervised the construction of St Mary’s Parish Institute, which opened in 1898. The size of the building had to be reduced when the estimated cost rocketed, but it had five classrooms and a hall which was used for temperance meetings, educational talks, fundraising bazaars and other parish activities. The Institute later became Northern Secondary School. Lang also served as chaplain to the local prison, the 2nd Hampshire Royal Artillery Volunteer Corp and Honorary Chaplain to Queen Victoria, whose funeral he helped arrange.
In 1936, as ArchBishop of Canterbury during the King’s abdication, Lang took a hard line and was widely criticised for being uncharitable towards the departed king. (The Times)
1805: Pioneering explorer of the African continent, Mungo Park, sailed from Portsmouth for the Gambia aboard the frigate Eugenia.
The full expedition that set off into the African interior comprised three officers and forty other Europeans, mostly British soldiers, plus local guides and slaves. The expedition reached the River Niger in August, by which time only eleven Europeans were still alive, the remainder having died of fever. In November, Park set sail downstream into the unknown reaches of the river in a large canoe with what remained of his expedition, one British officer and three soldiers (one by now was mad), a guide and three slaves. Park is believed to have sailed downstream for a further 1,000 miles, past Timbuktu, through Niger and into north-west Nigeria. Attacks by local tribes were successfully fought off with the available guns but, in Nigeria, the canoe became stranded and the party again came under attack from native tribesmen. It is believed that Park and the remaining three other Europeans were drowned trying to escape. In 1811, the Hampshire Telegraph reported that ‘all hope of the safety of Mungo Park has been entirely abandoned…’ (Morning Chronicle; Hampshire Telegraph)
1957: The aircraft carrier HMS Warrior was due to leave Portsmouth for the British nuclear weapons tests at Christmas Islands in the Pacific, but was unable to leave because of heavy gales. She left the following day to act as flagship of the naval squadron taking part in the tests, with 130 soldiers on board. Many of the men who took part in the tests were conscripts.
An able seaman on board Warrior, Nicholas Wilson, wrote in his diary: