British History

Although women weren’t allowed to become police officers until 1917, a new book explores their vital role as ‘searchers’

Some of the “searchers” were skilled at inspecting the clothes, hair and genitals of Victorian women and finding stolen money and pawn tickets for stolen goods. Others undertook risky sting operations, catching thieves and criminals red-handed and successfully testifying against them in court. Yet for nearly 200 years, the vital role 19th-century female detectives played in the police force has been overlooked and underestimated.

Now a new book is seeking to assert the rightful place of these courageous women – who were often working class – in the history of the police and celebrate their proto-feminist contribution to Victorian society.

“Women don’t officially enter the police force as officers until 1917. But across Britain, in a commonplace way, women are working for the police long before the police tell us they are,” said Dr Sara Lodge, a senior lecturer in Victorian literature and culture at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and author of the forthcoming boo, The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective. “They are part of the fabric of Victorian policing.”

Lodge has found records of “searchers” – women employed to search female suspects for concealed stolen goods at police stations – which date back to the 1840s, shortly after the Metropolitan police was founded.

“The searchers did a really important task because men, even today, can’t search a female suspect with propriety. And of course, in the Victorian period, there were huge opportunities for women to conceal things about their person.”

A pioneering work on the decorative and functional uses of large cetacean bones, documenting almost 1,000 large-whale bones in over 650 locations in the UK. It evaluates over 1,100 written sources and hundreds of pictures and hundreds of interviews with local people, the result of 30 years of research and travels to almost every single one of these locations.

Author's website: whalebones.co.uk

Pride in Britain’s history has fallen sharply over the past decade as the country has become less nationalistic and jingoistic and more reflective about its place in the modern world, according to a leading barometer of the British public mood.

Although Brexit and immigration have created flashpoints around national identity in recent years, the wider picture shows a more inclusive and self-critical sense of Britishness emerging and a decline in my-country-right-or-wrong views.

While levels of pride in Britain’s achievements in sport and the arts have remained high over the last 10 years, the overall impression is of “a country that is quite proud of itself but maybe no more than that”, the British social attitudes survey found.

There was a striking 22-point fall in the proportion of people saying they were proud of Britain’s history, from 86% to 64%, and a 13-point drop in those who said they would rather be a citizen of Britain than any other country, from 62% to 49%.

“Despite Brexit and the debate about immigration, Britain has become less exclusive in its attitude towards Britishness, less likely to feel a sense of superiority as compared with the rest of the world, and somewhat more critical about its politics and its past,” the survey report concludes. “It is perhaps a picture of a country that to some degree at least becomes more reflective about itself and about its relationship with the rest of the world.”

Just across the Kent border with Greater London, one of the UK's most unique locations is hidden - Chislehurst Caves. This remarkable place in historic Kent is nestled in the town of Chislehurst, a stone's throw from Bromley.

The caves are an intricate network of over 22 miles of manmade tunnels, burrowed between the 1200s and 1800s, concealed deep beneath a leafy and unsuspecting slice of suburbia.

Kent's rich history and culture have been significantly impacted by urban sprawl, and Chislehurst Caves is a prime example of this. Although technically the town and tunnels now fall under London, much of the caves' history unfolded when the area was part of Kent, making them an integral part of the county's past.

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Ancient Origins, a site dedicated to exploring archaeological discoveries, has delved into the history of the caves. According to them, when the caves first opened to the public in 1900, visitors were informed that parts of the system had been inhabited between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago.

Legend has it that the initial phase of the caves was carved out by druids, before being expanded upon by the Romans and then the Saxons around 500 AD. Ancient Origins reports that one of the earliest historical records of Chislehurst Caves is a 13th-century charter, which mentions their use for mining lime-burning chalk and flint.

There's also speculation that a prehistoric skeleton discovered in the ceiling could suggest the caves date back to 10,000 BC, when people sought refuge during the end of the Ice Age. However, as far as concrete origins go, the earliest evidence of anyone working or residing in the caves dates back to a 9th-century Saxon charter, which documents mines and lime-burning kilns in the area.

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It is reported that at the onset of the First World War in 1914, the caves served as a munitions depot. According to The Heritage Trail, they became part of the Woolwich Arsenal and a railway was installed to transport the munitions through the tunnels.

In the interwar period, the mines were utilised by the Kent Mushroom Company, with the humidity and darkness providing ideal conditions for mushroom cultivation.

During the peak of the Blitz in the Second World War, the caves were converted into an underground city. They became the largest air raid shelter in Britain, housing 15,000 people with a pitch costing one old penny per night.

The chapel space and hospital area are still present today for visitors to explore, along with a fully functioning electric lighting network - making living in the caves less daunting than it might initially appear.

DNA evidence from tombs in Sweden and Denmark suggests major plague outbreaks were responsible for the Neolithic decline in northern Europe

A famous portrait of King Henry VIII, long considered lost, has been found after an art historian spotted it in the background of a photo shared on social media.

The painting in question was once part of a famous set of 22 portraits commissioned in the 1590s by tapestry maker Ralph Sheldon. The portrait hung originally in Weston House, Sheldon’s Warwickshire home, but barely a handful of paintings from the collection survive today.

Art historian Adam Busiakiewicz, who works as a consultant for famous auction house Sotheby’s, spotted the painting in the background of a picture posted by the Warwickshire Lieutenancy on X on 4 July. The account had shared a photo of a reception held at the Shire Hall, and the portrait is just about visible in the background.

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“The fact I was lucky to piece together [what it was] in an hour is very exciting,” Mr Busiakiewicz told the BBC.

“I spend a lot of time thinking about paintings and looking at people’s walls.”

The desk of the writer Dr Samuel Johnson is to be returned to his former London home for the first time in more than 260 years.

Except, in a strange twist, its owner is now uncertain whether it really is the desk of the famous 18th Century dictionary author.

It's been suggested that despite many years of being treated as a literary relic, it could have been part of a Victorian hustle to make money.

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What's now in dispute is the fate of the desk on which he wrote the dictionary when he was living in Gough Square, in a house which is now a museum to his memory.

Since the 19th Century the wooden desk has been in Pembroke College Oxford - and the college is lending this prized possession to the Dr Johnson House museum.

But when Lynda Mugglestone, professor of the history of English at the college, began to check out the provenance of the desk, there were some unexpected questions.

"The real story is that we don't quite know if it's the real desk," she says.

It had come to the college through a clergyman who had been close to Dr Johnson's god daughter, Elizabeth Ann Lowe, and her sister. A plaque was attached to signify its historic importance.

But the puzzle is whether those sisters ever really had the desk or whether they used their literary connection as a way of guilt-tripping some famous writers of their era for money.

Prof Mugglestone says that as the centenary of Johnson's dictionary was being marked in 1855, the Lowe sisters began writing asking for cash, describing themselves as in penury and with nothing left but a desk which they said had been left to them by the great writer.

They were "living in poverty" in Deptford in south London, says Prof Mugglestone, and they made clear that "donations were welcome".

Writers such as Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, who had just written Hard Times, began to fund raise for the sisters.

Literary London was mobilised to help the sisters who were the surviving connections to Dr Johnson. The desk became part of that story.

Dickens wrote of the sisters being in "great poverty, but undemonstrative and uncomplaining, though very old - with nothing to speak of in the wide world, but the plain fir desk on which Johnson wrote his English Dictionary".

Such pleas from Dickens helped to raise large donations for the sisters, with the desk being saved as a "proud possession to the English nation".

But Celine Luppo McDaid, director of the Dr Johnson House, says it is now seems unclear whether this desk was actually Johnson's.

The case for it being authentic, she says, is that the sisters could have been thinking: "We've sold everything else, but we still have this treasured desk, it's the last thing we have."

Or else it might have been a chance to turn a bit of spare furniture into a financial lifeline.

"They might have seen an opportunity and decided that the knackered old desk in the corner was 'Johnson's desk'," says the museum director Ms McDaid.

Eighty years on: the story of D-Day as it unfolds, using rediscovered testimonies of those who were there, on all sides.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15875398

The FBI is investigating the sale to US buyers of what are suspected to be hundreds of treasures from the British Museum.

The BBC understands the US law enforcement agency has also assisted with the return of 268 items, which the museum claims belong to it, that were sold to a collector in Washington DC.

The British Museum announced last year that ancient gems, jewellery and other items from its collection, were missing, stolen or damaged.

One buyer, based in New Orleans, told the BBC an FBI agent had emailed him asking for information about two pieces he had bought on eBay.

The FBI agent said they were assisting the Metropolitan Police with investigating missing or stolen items from the museum.

The buyer has said he is no longer in possession of either gem and does not believe they have been located by authorities. The FBI did not request further information from him.

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Neither the FBI agent, the museum or British police followed up with him - said Mr Birbiglia - so the two gems have not yet been tracked down by the authorities.

“The whole thing just seemed like they [the FBI] were blowing it off,” he said. “He [the agent] didn't try very hard.”

The BBC understands the FBI has also assisted with the investigation of 268 items in the Washington DC area that were sold by the same seller.

But between 1588 and 1960 there was a tax on physical playing cards - and in 1765 a process was introduced to make sure all vendors and makers would stump up the duty.

Makers had to supply the tax office with paper to match their other cards, and the tax office - also known as the stamp office - would print the ace of spades using engraved metal plates, a printing technology that was expensive and not widely available.

The maker would then buy the printed aces from the stamp office - thereby paying the tax. In order to make it more difficult to forge these aces, more and more elaborate designs were used.

Richard Harding, a licensed card-maker with shops in Oxford Street and Grosvenor Square, carried on the manufacturing and selling of playing cards.

He did a roaring trade - but made very few demands of the stamp office.

A Mr John Hockey from the stamp office was put on the case. He started by buying six packs of playing cards from Harding's business and finding all of the aces were forged.

Obviously not one to leave things to chance, he continued to repeat his purchases until he had 90 packs of playing cards. All the aces of spades were forgeries.

The habits of this man, with his apparently insatiable desire for packs of cards, must have roused the suspicions of Harding for when his businesses and home were raided - not one forgery was found.

The dogged men from the stamp office were not about to give up and some of Harding's acquaintances were also paid a visit.

A Mr Skelton leased part of a building in his rear yard to Harding, where Harding would, in the words of the prosecution, "carry on his nefarious business".

Mr Skelton denied any knowledge of Harding's nefarious business. This, however, was cast into doubt when 2,000 aces of spades were found in his home.

More were found at his daughter's house, hidden in a basket of "foul linen".

Investigators also discovered, buried about a foot beneath the earth at the bottom of his yard, printing plates. In the privy, they found more.

They were for the aces of spades.

During the trial, John Hockey, the man who bought 90 packs of cards from Harding, told the Old Bailey he had paid the standard market rate - Harding wasn't therefore getting away with shoddy copies by selling them cheap.

So how had he managed to print aces of spades convincing enough they didn't raise the alarm with ordinary buyers?

It emerged he paid for an associate, a stone-seal engraver called Hugh Leadbetter, to take copper-engraving lessons.

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Harding left his defence to his counsel, and called seven witnesses who gave him a good character.

Yet on 21 September 1805 he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Two months later, he was hanged.

His remains were at St George Hanover Square Burial Ground in Bayswater until 12 March 1969, when he - and others - were removed to Lambeth and cremated.

Should the term “Anglo-Saxon” be dropped because it’s been adopted by racists?

People online are angry because a history journal has dropped “Anglo-Saxon” from its title. Critics say it is pandering to American academics who are unduly worried about the term being used by white supremacists. The journal says that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s part of an ongoing debate about whether “Anglo Saxon” is useful and appropriate. How did the argument start? Where did the term actually come from? And how has it been used in modern times to talk about race?

One of the guests has a YouTube video on the topic.

A scratched wooden door found by chance at the top of a medieval turret has been revealed to be an “astonishing” graffiti-covered relic from the French revolutionary wars, including an carving that could be a fantasy of Napoleon Bonaparte being hanged.

Over 50 individual graffiti carvings were chiselled into the door in the 1790s by bored English soldiers stationed at Dover Castle in Kent, when Britain was at war with France in the wake of the French Revolution.

They include a detailed carving of a sailing ship, an elaborate stylised cross and nine individual scenes of figures being hanged – one of whom is wearing a bicorn hat.

The simple plank door was first discovered several years ago at the top of St John’s tower, which for more than a century had been impossible to access without climbing a ladder to the base of a spiral staircase. At the time, however, it was covered in thick layers of paint that obscured many of its markings.

It was only when it was recently removed for conservation, requiring the paint to be carefully taken off, that the full details of the door’s carvings came to light.

“We had had glimpses of what might be on it, but when it was stripped back, the totality of it was quite amazing,” said Paul Pattison, senior properties historian at English Heritage, which manages the castle.

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“What makes this door such an extraordinary object is that it is a rare and precious example of the ordinary person making their mark; whether that be simply for the purpose of killing time, or wanting to be remembered.”

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The nine hangings are clearly by different hands, said Pattison, pointing to a preoccupation of the soldiers with public executions, which would have been common at the time. The detail of one, which shows the figure wearing a bicorn hat, has led to intriguing speculation that it could depict a fantasy of a defeated Napoleon being hanged. (In fact the emperor would die in exile in 1821, reportedly of stomach cancer.)

“It’s obviously a man in uniform – so this is a military man,” said Pattison, adding that only officers wore the distinctive hat.

While Pattison remains to be convinced beyond doubt that it is intended to be the French military leader, “it almost certainly depicts a particular individual being hung – and they obviously were an officer, which is quite unusual”.

Fact check

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14362366

Her new book, Chamber Divers, is about research conducted by scientists at UCL [University College London] before and during World War II — including protocols for operating the miniature submarines used on scouting missions in advance of D-Day.

"These tiny subs had a smaller gas volume, which made the rules of breathing physiology even more time critical," Lance explains. "The scientists ... did this experiment by just putting themselves in a tank, closing the door and waiting to see how long they could physically handle the amount of carbon dioxide in there before they ended up with migraines and projectile vomiting."

Lance notes that UCL scientists subjected themselves to extremes that would be considered "wildly unethical and illegal today." Some sustained serious injuries — including seizures and broken spines — in the hyperbaric chamber.

"One of them ... dislocated her jaw five times in the same dive," Lance says. But, she adds, "they were doing it because they were in this context of the Blitz and the bombings and the horrors of World War II happening around them."