51_53_Henry Cole.qxp_Grid 19/12/2024 19:59 Page 2
FOCUS ON… SIR HENRY COLE
A TRULY GREAT GRANDAD
The majority of us hold our grandads in high esteem, but Alice MacDonnell has many reasons to elevate the status of her 4x grandfather. At a recent presentation at the Royal Society of the Arts’ London base, Alice explained how she recently rediscovered the Brompton Cemetery grave of the man after whom the greeting card industry’s highly-prized Henries awards are named, who was a great friend of Prince Albert and with claims to fame that most could only dream. “If there's one thing that people know about Henry Cole, usually it's that he invented the Christmas card,” Alice said, pointing to the display by The Steps area at the RSA HQ, which included an original 1843 Christmas card, kindly loaned by PG’s editor Jakki Brown. However, Alice is now on a mission to extend the good wishes of her ancestor. Sir Henry and his wife Marian had eight children including son Alan, Alice’s three-times great grandfather, and she admitted her quest was sparked from only knowing Grandpa Henry had “created the first Christmas card and that he had a connection with the V&A”. She set out to buy a copy of the only biography of the man – The Great Exhibitor: The Life And Work Of Sir Henry Cole by Elizabeth Bonython and Anthony Burton – at the Victoria & Albert Museum only to
discover none of the shop staff had heard of him, even though he not only founded the institution, was the first director for more than 20 years, and one section is called the Henry Cole Wing. Going on to explain the event’s title From A Mummified Rat To The Creation Of South Kensington, Alice said it starts with Sir Henry’s initial work with the Public Record Office where he found the aforementioned
What do the National Archives, Royal Society of Arts, V&A, Royal Albert Hall, the Great Exhibition, postage stamps, the blue plaque scheme and Christmas cards have in common? The Victorian entrepreneur, inventor and campaigner, Sir Henry Cole. PG took its seat at the Royal Society of the Arts recently as his descendant, Alice MacDonnell shared her determination that her greatgreat-great-great grandfather receives the true recognition he deserves. Above left: Sir Henry and Marian with their eight children. Bottom: Alice MacDonnell is raising awareness of her ancestor Sir Henry Cole’s legacy, which started with the mummified rat. Bottom: The RSA display includes PG Jakki Brown’s original Sir Henry Cole Christmas card.
rat corpse in the depths of the building and “its stomach was full of the nation's documents, all of our important things that were being stored for our history were basically in such appalling conditions that this rat had made his house there”. He took the rat into parliament to show the conditions, which led to the department being revamped into the National Archives, where Sir Henry’s story is now celebrated with toy rats for sale, and there’s even a 3D printed version available for youngsters to handle. At the RSA he’s known as the second founder having been highly influential at the then Society Of Arts when Prince Albert was president, and there is now a Sir Henry Cole room in the prestigious London building. He helped establish the Great Exhibition of 1851 with Queen Victoria’s consort and they worked together to use some of the proceeds to develop the South Kensington area of London known as Albertopolis – where Sir Henry later helped design the Royal Albert Hall in his memory. He also campaigned with Rowland Hill for the reform of the postal service, bringing in the ground-breaking idea of stamps which the sender paid for to replace the old system where the recipient had to cough up to get their letters – and Alice is currently working PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE 51