200 Magazine February 1823 / 2023

INSIDE FEBRUARY’S EDITION

Robinson, 40, takes over as Chancellor as young Tories move into pole position

George III’s huge library is given to the nation by his son - but where will it be housed?

Deaths of Edward Jenner, Father of vaccination, and tycoon and art collector John Angerstein

Ancient burial site discovered in South Wales, ochre red skeleton taken to Oxford for examination

FROM 200’S ARCHIVE

JANUARY’S EDITION

Scores die in shipwrecks off UK coastline | Body-snatching fears at London grave of top boxer

DECEMBER’S EDITION

Beethoven commissioned to pen new symphony | Radical leader Henry Hunt freed from prison

IN OCTOBER’S EDITION

Rosetta Stone deciphered | Troops sent to Tyneside to guard key locations in coal dispute

IN SEPTEMBER’S EDITION

George IV in historic Scottish visit | Stork shot in Germany reveals secrets of bird migration

IN AUGUST’S EDITION

Tory Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh commits suicide | First animal welfare law in UK

IN JULY’S EDITION

Poet Percy Shelley drowns off Italian coast | Large US slave uprising crushed in Charleston IN JUNE’S EDITION

Ireland faces famine after crop failure | First track laid for Stockton & Darlington Railway

Louis: 100,000 French ready to invade Spain

The French king has given the clearest indication yet that his country’s army is preparing to invade Spain to restore to full power its embattled ultra-conservative monarch, Ferdinand VII.

Opening the French parliament on 28 January, King Louis XVIII confirmed that his ambassador had been recalled from Madrid and that 100,000 troops were ready to march across the border, to save Spain from “ruin, and reconciling it with Europe”.

King Ferdinand has been under effective house arrest in recent months and a revolt in his favour by royal guards last July failed. He has been at odds with ministers since Spain’s liberal political order was re-instated in 1820 after the army revolted against his authoritarian rule. Ferdinand had overturned a reformist constitution that introduced universal male suffrage.

Britain remains opposed to intervention. King George, opening Parliament (4 Feb), said war would be a calamity.

The Foreign Secretary, George Canning, is understood to be indignant at Louis XVII’s speech and has made a final appeal to his French counterpart to avoid conflict.

Campaign to end slavery launched

The first large-scale campaign to abolish slavery across the British Empire is under way, 16 years after Parliament in London banned the transatlantic trade in human beings.

The hope that slavery would wither away after the supply of slaves in British vessels was cut off has been dashed, and campaigners estimate there are 800,000 enslaved people across the empire. More slave colonies have been acquired since 1807, including Dememera on the north coast of South America.

The King’s cousin, the Duke of Gloucester, is to be president of the group set up in London on 31 January.

The new society says it is campaigning for legislation to mitigate and gradually abolish slavery throughout Britain’s overseas colonies and dominions, but it is clear that some among its number, especially younger members, want immediate abolition.

William Wilberforce, the driving force behind abolition of the slave trade, is among founders of the Anti-Slavery Society. But he is 63 and in poor health, and leadership of the political campaign at Westminster is switching to Dorset’s Independent MP, Thomas Fowell Buxton Mr Wilberforce is writing what will amount to a manifesto for the new group and this is expected to be published in March.

Among its other backers are the leading Whig MP Henry Brougham, another veteran campaigner, Thomas Clarkson, and Zachary Macaulay, a onetime slave overseer in Jamaica who has been converted to the anti-slavery cause.

From 2023, 200 appears as a larger magazine in March, June, September and December, and in this shorter format in other months

Reshuffle: new Tory generation takes reins

The re-shaping of Lord Liverpool’s top ministerial team has been completed with the naming of a new Chancellor of the Exchequer, only just past the age of 40.

Frederick Robinson, President of the Board of Trade since 1818, has replaced Nicholas Vansittart, who has been in charge at the Treasury for more than a decade.

This means that in the space of scarcely 12 months all three Great Offices of State have changed hands, passing to much younger ministers who have risen during or even after the Napoleonic Wars.

First to go was Lord Sidmouth, replaced by Robert Peel (now 35) at the Home Office, then George Canning (52) took the place of Lord Castlereagh {the Marquess of Londonderry) after the foreign secretary’s suicide last August.

Peel, Robinson and Canning are now well-placed to take the Tory leadership о when Lord Liverpool steps down as prime minister. Apart from the Lord Chancellor (the Earl of Eldon), he is now the longest-serving member of the cabinet, prime minister since 1812.

The new chancellor is believed to want to cut taxes, but he may yet have to address the future of the protectionist Corn Laws which he steered through parliament as a junior minister in 1815. These remain unpopular because they have inflated bread prices in the UK.

Reformers step up attacks on Liverpool ministry

Henry Hunt and William Cobbett have spearheaded renewed radical demands for reform of Parliament, the political system and public finances.

‘Orator’ Hunt made his first major appearance since being released from gaol late in 1822 at a county meeting at Wells in Somerset. He had served 30 months for offences related to the pro-democracy meeting broken up by troops in Manchester in 1819 that became known as Peterloo

Mr Hunt said the time for half-measures had passed, and he successfully urged the Somerset meeting to back a call for universal male suffrage and the secret ballot.

DUBLIN: The trial of members of the Protestant Orange Order over their involvement in disturbances at a theatre attended by Ireland’s lord lieutenant in December has collapsed, with no verdict being reached. The prosecution had previously dropped a charge of conspiracy to murder Marquess Wellesley in the so-called ‘bottle riot’.

LONDON: Female activist Susannah Wright has been jailed for 18 months for selling blasphemous publications at a London shop owned by the radical publisher, Richard Carlile. Mrs Wright defended herself at her trial last July for selling pamphlets written by Mr Carlile to an agent of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. She was held on remand pending sentencing and gave birth while in prison.

GOWER PENINSULA: The skeleton of a man who is believed to have died thousands of years ago has been found in the Paviland or Goat’s Hole cave 15 miles south-west of Swansea. The discovery was made by Oxford academic, William Buckland, who uncovered a burial site, with bones and associated objects stained red with ochre. The remains are being taken to Oxford for examination. о

King’s library given to nation

Tens of thousands of books collected by King George III during his 60 year reign have been given to the nation by his son, George IV. о

In a letter to the Prime Minister, the Earl of Liverpool, the King said the donation was a just tribute to his “revered” father, as well as advancing Britain’s literature.

The government will now have to decide what to do with the huge collection, containing, according to the King, 120,000 volumes, though this number may include unbound tracts and manuscripts. The most likely home is believed to be the British Museum.

George III is said to have spent at least о £1,500 a year buying books, old and new.

Rural campaigner and writer William Cobbett took his case for change to another officially-sanctioned county meeting, in Herefordshire.

Fresh from his success in getting Norfolk to back calls for the sale of church and crown lands, abolition of a standing army, and a moratorium on seizure of property for unpaid rents, he told the meeting in Herefordshire that “ministers did not know how to do what was right”. The meeting backed a call for sinecurespaid appointments requiring little work - to be suspended and public sector salaries to be cut back to 1792 levels.

A Yorkshire meeting was told by the county’s former Radical MP Walter Fawkes that Britain’s political system was characterised by “rapid and alarming venality,” with ‘placemen and sinecurists’ living off public revenues while many of their countrymen were “steeped in poverty”.

FREDERICK ROBINSON, PAINTED BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE IN 1824

TheGloucestershire doctor who transformed medicine and science with his vaccine against the killer disease of smallpox has died.

Dr Edward Jenner dramatically advanced the prevention of smallpox by experimenting with, and then developing the use of pus from the cowpox spots of a dairy maid to infect a healthy person, whose body would develop immunity to the disease.

Previously the only protection had been variolation, a method similar to vaccination which had been used in Asia and Africa for centuries, but carried with it risks and had not been widely used in Britain.

For some years Dr Jenner had researched the idea that those who had once contracted cowpox were immune from smallpox.

In 1796, Edward Jenner took material from the arm of cowpox sufferer Sarah Nelmes and successfully inoculated an eight-year-old boy. Sarah had developed blisters after milking a cow called Blossom.

Despite initial resistance, the medical profession soon backed vaccination, usage spread, and Parliament awarded о £30,000 in funding for Dr Jenner’s work.

Dr Jenner pushed the case for vaccination in a 1798 book and he supplied the vaccine to other doctors, determined to make the remedy available on the basis of need, rather than making money. Part of his Berkeley home was turned into what has been called the world’s first free vaccination clinic. But Dr Jenner’s work has not always been popular.

Some priests and doctors have opposed his work, and cartoonists have claimed there is a risk of those vaccinated developing cow-like features. The government is being urged to build a monument to Dr Jenner. A burial in Westminster Abbey has been offered to the family. о

Edward Jenner, 17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823

Edward Jenner, pioneer of vaccination, dead at 73 Also mourned: Angerstein, tycoon and art collector, and mathematician Hutton

Britain’s financial, arts, and academic communities have lost two more major international figures, with the deaths in January of businessman and philanthropist John Julius Angerstein, 87, and mathematician Charles Hutton, who was 85.

Reputedly born to the Russian empress Anna and a British merchant in St Petersburg, John Julius Angerstein spent more than half a century in the insurance business as a broker and underwriter, becoming a key figure at Lloyd’s of London.

One of the wealthiest men in Britain, his fortune enabled him to become an art conoisseur and philanthropist.

Mr Angerstein chaired the Jennerian Society for the Extermination of the Small Pox, secured grants from Lloyd’s for the construction of lifeboats and stations, donated о £61,000 to a school for naval orphans, and supported the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor.

As an art collector Mr Angerstein amassed works by Claude, Rembrandt, Titian, Rubens, Wilkie and Hogarth. There is likely to be considerable jockeying for ownership of the collection after his death.

John Julius Angerstein, 1835 – 22 January 1823

The mathematician Charles Hutton, who has also died, has been hailed by Sir Humphrey Davy as “one of the most able mathematicians of his country and his age”.

Born in Newcastle to a superintendant of mines, Charles Hutton worked briefly in a colliery but went to school instead after being injured in a street fight. He became a successful teacher and started his own school, applying maths to book-keeping, navigation and surveying.

For 30 years Mr Hutton was professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy He produced textbooks and calculated the mass and density of the earth.

Charles Hutton, 14 August 1737 – 27 January 1823

JOHN JULIUS ANGERSTEIN (L), PAINTED BY SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE IN 1824, AND CHARLES HUTTON (R), IN AN 1823 ENGRAVING BY JAMES THOMSON

EDWARD JENNER VACCINATING JAMES PHIPPS. THE WOMAN HOLDING HIM IS SAID TO BE SARAH NELMES. PAINTED BY EUGÈNE-ERNEST HILLEMACHER IN 1884.

How even Jenner was trolled 200 years ago

Generations before computers, the internet, and social media made human interaction so easy, even medical pioneers like Edward Jenner, the Father of Vaccination, had to cope with strident criticism.

Sometimes the concerns voiced were legitimate and understandable, faced with the new smallpox vaccine. But sometimes scepticism and questioning turned into hysteria and exaggeration, fuelled by eye-catching cartoons like the grotesque one from 1802 on this page.

Dr Jenner was the target of 19th century anti-vaxxers, but he had no shortage of admirers.

Should ‘Welsh Elgin Marbles’ be returned?

The 30,000 year old human remains found in a cave in the Gower Peninsula in January 1822 were those of a man, as initially thought, although the body was inaccurately renamed ‘the Red Lady of Paviland’ soon after. They are on display in Oxford’s Museum of Natural History

A newspaper epitaph called him “the great physician of the human race” and hailed “Immortal Jenner, whose gigantic mind brought life and health to more than half mankind”.

Dr Jenner’s House at Berkeley, Gloucestershire, is now a museum and re-opens in April. It includes the Temple of Vaccinia, a small summer house that became the world’s first vaccination clinic.

о Interview by ABC Radio, Australia

о Heritage trail in Berkeley launched by Jenner Project

о Jenner plaque unveiled in Cirencester

о Wikipedia, including further reading

Discovered by an Oxford University academic, it was inevitable they would cross the border for examination.

NOTES FROM NOW

Observations about the news from 1823

The death of the hugely wealthy John Julius Angerstein in January 1823 triggered events that led to the opening of the National Gallery in London in 1824.

Angerstein’s 38 paintings were bought for the nation in the same year for о £57,000 and formed the cornerstone of a new national collection. The pictures were displayed at Angerstein’s house at 100 Pall Mall until the gallery in Trafalgar Square was built.

Both the National Gallery and Lloyd’s of London, where Angerstein made his fortune, have investigated his economic connections with slavery and the slave trade. His early wealth came from marine insurance, with its inevitable links to the transatlantic trade in people and goods. But research has found no evidence that he was a slavetrader or slave-owner, or that financially he benefitted directly himself.

But there are calls for them to go back to Wales, even likening this to the campaign for the Elgin Marbles to return to Greece. Some 1823 finds were sent back: fox teeth are at Swansea Museum, and a bone spatula at St Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff. But the UK’s oldest human remains remain in England.

In Washington, January 1823 saw the death of Yarrow Mamout. Born in West Africa around 1736, he was enslaved and taken to America in 1752. He was the property of a plantation owner for 44 years until freed in 1796 because he was believed to be too old to work. Mamout bought his son’s freedom, saved and invested, and became a property owner and entrepreneur, an extraordinary end for an ex-Muslim slave. Portraits of Mamout are held in galleries in Washington and Philadelphia and his family’s biography was written by historian James H. Johnston

The Royal Mint Experience at Llantrisant, South Wales, lets members of the public strike a £2 coin like this themselves. They can also be purchased online from £12.

Stephenson events begin

The bicentenary of the locomotive company founded in June 1823 by Stockton & Darlington Railway pioneers Robert Stephenson and his father George is being marked by activities in Newcastle this year. These include an exhibition at the city’s Common Room until late March, and a variety of talks at the same venue

200 is edited by John Evans. Thanks to Jane Evans, Jude Painter, Larry Breen, British Newspaper Archive, Cambridge University Library, Central Bedfordshire Libraries. Email: feedback@200livinghistory. info Copyright issues/takedown requests: john@freehistoryproject.uk

AN 1802 CARTOON SHOWING VACCINATED PATIENTS IN THE SMALLPOX AND INOCULATION HOSPITAL AT ST. PANCRAS, LONDON, DEVELOPING COW-LIKE FEATURES.

THE ROYAL MINT HAS PRODUCED A NON-CURRENCY JENNER COMMEMORATIVE COIN (REVERSE BY HENRY GRAY)

YARROW MAMOUT

A 1980 PAINTING OF THE RITUAL BURIAL