Drugs

National security

Hunting

Globalisation

Euro-scepticism

Judges

Expert witnesses

Notting Hill

National statistics

Crisis of masculinity

Gun control

Wimmin

War on terror

Freedom of thought

Whitehall control

Global warming

Property prices

I had indeed some misgivings as to the prudence of exchanging investments in the funds, productive of a fixed income without care or risk, for property not equally remunerative, & which might become less so (as in the event it did) & might also entail upon me many expenses, some necessary, some optional yet hardly to be avoided by a residential owner with duties to be performed & tastes to gratify.



But my solicitor thought (as most people then did) that of all forms of property land was the most secure & the most certain to maintain its value


Roundell Palmer: Memorials

Property boom

The English squire first drove the poorer Scotch one out of the market & he, in his turn, has been superseded by millionaires from London, Manchester & America. Incredible prices are given by the latter for all our first class forests & shootings

Colquhoun: Sporting Days 1866

A considerate husband

I have been visiting a great rifle man & was almost tempted to order one, the price of an efficient one being £70! I have rather satisfied myself that this would be an unwarrantable piece of selfishness

Gladstone to His Wife 1853

The art of shooting

Captain Townshend started from England for the far West with a brother officer & a complete hunters equipment. He was away 5 months in all, & during that time he shot buffaloes, elks, antelopes, several varieties of deer, wolves, beavers, wild turkeys, prairie hens & many other birds which it would be tedious to enumerate. The guns, the accoutrements, & all the further requirements for this & other kinds of sport are rather too shortly described in Captain Townshends volume


The Spectator review of Ten Thousand Miles of Travel, Sport & Adventure by F Trench Townshend BA, Captain 2nd Life Guards: 1869

Mr Preston's sporting prowess procured him admission into much higher society than he was otherwise entitled to enter. He was a capital cricketer; was so good a shot, that any house desirous of reputation for its bags on the 12th or the 1st, was glad to have him for a guest

Mrs Gaskell: Wives & Daughters

Economic development

THE PROSPERITY of the labouring classes, as well as of all other classes, depends in Jamaica, & in other communities, upon their working for wages, not uncertainly, or capriciously, but steadily & continuously, at the times when their labour is wanted, & for so long as it is wanted;

AND THAT if they would use this industry, & thereby render the plantations productive, they would enable the planters to pay them higher wages for the same hours of work than are received by the best field labourers in this country;

&, as the cost of the necessaries of life is much less in Jamaica than it is here, they would be enabled, by adding prudence to industry, to lay by an ample provision for seasons of drought & dearth;

AND THEY may be assured, that it is from their own industry & prudence, in availing themselves of the means of prospering that are before them, & not from any such schemes as have been suggested to them, that they must look for an improvement in their conditions

Queen Victoria - reply to petitions for reorganisation of Jamaican economy (drafted by Colonial Office)

Healthy diets

In the British Empire:

26m consume flesh abundantly
10m " " sparingly
15m " " occasionally
9m " " seldom
70m live entirely on a farinaceous diet & fish

34m have wheat/oats/barley as principal veg
6m potatoes, peas, other
90m rice, maize, millet, pulse etc

5m drink wine
25m malted liquors
30m distilled spirits
20m opium, beng (wild hemp), other stimulants
60m generally stick with aqueous beverages

Robert Montgomery Martin: Colonial Policy of the British Empire (1837)

Property prices

I had indeed some misgivings as to the prudence of exchanging investments in the funds, productive of a fixed income without care or risk, for property not equally remunerative, & which might become less so (as in the event it did) & might also entail upon me many expenses, some necessary, some optional yet hardly to be avoided by a residential owner with duties to be performed & tastes to gratify.

But my solicitor thought (as most people then did) that of all forms of property land was the most secure & the most certain to maintain its value

Roundell Palmer: Memorials

Barristers

The principal danger to a very successful advocate is arrogance

All the world over there are believers & unbelievers in every class. Of the most eminent lawyers whom I have known, it may be safely affirmed that at least as large a proportion were good & sincere Christians as in any other profession


Roundell Palmer: Memorials

A career in law

The profits of a good business in equity were greater than at common law; but the publicity, popularity & fame of conspicuous success were greater at common law than in equity

Roundell Palmer: Memorials

Identity

All who have any experience of courts of justice would admit that there is nothing upon which men are at once so positive & so often mistaken as personal identity

Law Times 1846

Punishment

Let no maudlin sentimentality or pseudo-philanthropy interpose between the criminal & that punishment which the law has assigned to his offence

Times Leader 7 Jan 1856

Murder & financial crimes

Murder is rife in the land in its most violent & its most insidious forms, & the astounding disclosures of fraudulent dealings amongst our mercantile classes - the thousand ingenious shapes which crime has assumed in the hands of the regular criminal practitioners - are all tokens which point to the necessity of stern repression

Times Leader 7 Jan 1856

Judicial qualities

Some of our very best judges have been taken from among men who have never attained to anything approaching to eminence as advocate. The high qualities of their mind are known to a discerning few

Times Leader 7 Jan 1856

Overwork

One of the finest advocates that I remember was Sir John Karslake, a fine handsome man & to all appearances of iron strength. 'Handsome Jack' he asked to be called, & his powers as an advocate were beyond all need of praise.

At the time when he was Attorney-General he was entitled to continue his ordinary practice as a counsel in addition to his official duties. What was the result? At the end of his days I have seen him groping his way in the Temple, quite blind, & dragging a leg behind.

There are many instances of brilliant men breaking down completely from undue strain on the brain & body

Sir Henry Dickens (son of Charles): Recollections 1934 p193

Forecasting the future

The experience of the past shows that it is impossible, even through the attempted exercise of prophecy, to regulate the future


Select Committee on the Bank Acts 1858

Famous forecasts

Attention may also be directed to one further element of strength, & that is - all other appearances to the contrary - the indissoluble character of the Federal Union, by which the States are linked to one another, & this without the remotest prospect of open collision. The people in the North regard slavery in the Southern states as a fact with which they have no right to interfere ...



Slavery ... is becoming unprofitable. It will flicker & pass away in the South, as it did in the North ... that is when it ceases to pay & becomes an insupportable evil to those who have to endure it ... The entire abolition of slavery in the US will probably be brought about as a question of profit & loss long before the terms on which one race should be subjected to another are fairly settled by casuists


D Morier Evans: A History of the Commercial Crisis 1857-8 1859

Modern communications

Messrs John Bright & Bros are now working the telephone between their warehouse in Spring Gardens Manchester & their works in Rochdale, a distance of 15 miles. Conversation is carried on with the greatest ease & so perfect are the arrangements that whispers can be distinctly heard at each end. The wire in question is carried over the city warehouses & along the towing path of the Rochdale Canal


The Manchester Guardian 3 January 1879

Crime statistics

A certain number of persons had been garrotted annually in London during the past 8 years. We decline to state the number on which we alighted. Not intending, in this essay, to work on statistical principles, we will not subject ourselves to the annoyance of having our statistics questioned


St Pauls Magazine (edited by Trollope) January 1868

Black lawyers

A coloured barrister, Mr Rainy of Sierra Leone, appeared as one of the counsel in a case which came before the Court of the Queens Bench in London on Monday. The learned gentleman, whose appearance excited some interest at the bar, stated the case with considerable ability


Beehive 23 November 1867

Safe as houses

In the Bail Court it was stated in evidence that in nearly all London houses of a recent date a child jumping from a bed or a boy jumping on a hearth would cause the ceiling of the room below to fall


Illustrated London News 9 November 1867

Rail travel

The first sensation of rail travel is a slight degree of nervousness & of being run away with, but a sense of security soon supervenes, & the velocity is delightful. Town after town, one park after another, are left behind with the rapid variety of a moving panorama, & the continual bustle & animation of the changes & stoppages make the journey very entertaining

Charles Greville

Male grooming

Every morning he had his hair dressed by a perruquier of Streathams in Princes St, Hanover Sq. Either the head of the firm or some assistant dashed up to Chester Terrace in a cab, which was kept waiting an hour or so at the door while the tonsor was operating upon Redpaths not very luxuriant locks

D Morier Evans: Facts, Failures & Frauds 1859

Independent judiciary

Of 139 appointments to the High Court or Appeal Court 1832-1906, 80 had been MPs, of whom 63 were appointed by the party they supported

Harold Laski: Studies in Law & Politics

The spread of civilisation

I had then, as I have always continued to have, a very strong feeling as to the wrongs done, in the name of civilisation, to those native races, whom European colonists have dispossessed of their lands, corrupted by introducing forms of vice before unknown to them, & provoked by aggressive acts into wars tending to their extermination

Roundell Palmer: Memoirs 1896

Snobbery

What I especially love is the view you have taken of the windbag snobbish conventionality of all the stuck-up dry-winded sweaty Anglo-Indians believing they are somebodies over there, instead of being a set of currie-brained, chutney-bowelled, pawnee swilling, chow-chow bloated 'boy'-bawling sons of prickly-heated bitches & be damned to them

Albert Smith to WH Russell of The Times 1860

Statistics

His gifted mind was endowed with a singular analytical skill in putting figures before the public in an intelligible form, & he had the happy art of rendering statistical & other subjects attractive & readable, from the clear & lucid manner in which he arranged them

InMemoriam:R Dudley Baxter 1878

A healthy diet?

The slaves [in Rio], who work like horses ... eat nothing but rice & coarsely ground maize boiled together in water. Some of the masters add to their ration on a Sunday a small bit of putrefied cod. Now we whites, who expend no muscular strength, eat 5 perhaps 10 times more nourishing food than they do; consequently we digest badly what we eat: we are thin, or else loaded with an excess quantity of fat. The negroes are all in good condition. Their is neither thinness nor obesity among them

Victor Jacquemont: Letters From India 1834

Colonial luxury

ON BEING GIVEN PATE IN THE HIMALAYA: An income of 100,000 Francs diminishes distance in a singular manner, & exercises the action of a sucking pump on all the good things of Europe, raising them to a height of 7 or 8 thousand feet above the level of the sea

Victor Jacquemont: Letters from India 1834

Traffic forecasts

The railways very modernity & success in generating new traffic also generated expansion in older forms of transport, for all the feeder services bringing freight & passengers to the railway stations were horse-drawn. There was a three- or fourfold increase in horse-drawn traffic on Victorian roads

FML Thompson: The rise of Respectable Society

News from America

The study of the domestic policy of the United States, always somewhat difficult to foreigners, has not been facilitated by the use which is made of the electric telegraph. The isolated scraps in which the main items of intelligence reach the Old World by this means of communication are very apt to puzzle all but the well informed, & by depriving the subsequent epistolary correspondence of all novelty, to discourage efforts necessary to obtain a comprehensive view of American affairs

Illustrated London News 14 September 1867

New mwn

The House of Commons itself, for a moment, vibrated to a feeling not the less manly that it was in the best sense womanly

The Spectator 23 November 1867

America's attitude to the world

A feeling hardly to be called immoral, a hankering after individual & national prosperity (terms almost interchangeable in the American mind) at whatever risk & cost to other nations

D Morier Evans: The History of the Commercial Crisis. 1859

Statistics

I utterly disbelieve in statistics as a science ... figures, when they go beyond six in number, represent to me not facts but dreams, or sometimes worse than dreams

Anthony Trollope: The West Indies & the Spanish Main 1859

Scandal

Once in every 6 or 7 years our virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws of religion & decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. Accordingly some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offences have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice

Lord Macaulay. Review of Thomas Moores Life of Byron 1831

Scientists

Whewell suggested the name scientist in 1834, half jokingly. Even as late as the 1890s many men of science, including Huxley & Kelvin, refused to use the word

Helge Kragh: The Historiography of Science 1987

The burden of the poor

India is the Utopia of social order for the aristocracy: in Europe the poor carry the rich upon their shoulders, but it is only metaphorically; here it is without figure. Instead of workers & consumers, or governed & governors - the subtle distinction of European politics - in India there are only the carried & the carrying, which is much clearer

Victor Jacquemont: Letters From India 1834

Election expenses

The purity of my election to parliament was proved by the fact that it did not cost me more than about £600

Roundell Palmer: Memoirs 1896

Womens Lib

When women have the vote they will be more & not less opposed than now to make a plaything of sex & of entering into the sex relationship

Christabel Pankhurst

Science & religion

Freedom of thought is best promoted by gradual illumination of mens minds, which follows from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science

Charles Darwin

Planning for war

The Administration which ordered that expedition had no adequate information as to the armament of the forces in the Crimea. They were not acquainted with the strength of the fortresses to be attacked nor with the resources of the country to be invaded. They hoped & expected the expedition to be immediately successful, &, as they did not foresee the probability of a protracted struggle, they made no preparation for a winter campaign …

Select Committee on Crimean War June 1855

Its great to be young

Of all decades in our history, a wise man would choose the 1850s to be young in

GM Young: Portrait of an Age

Decline of civilisation

Will anyone, 100 years from now, consent to live in the houses the Victorians built, travel by their roads or railways, value the furnishings they made to live among or esteem, except for curious or historical reasons, their prevalent art & the clipped & limited literature that satisfied their souls? Victorian people were … overtaken by power, by possessions & great new freedoms, & unable to make any civilised use of them whatever

HG Wells: The New Machiavelli (1911)