clever Irish scientist: Mary Ward 1827-69.

Georgian London wrote about Margaret Bryan (c1770-c1816) who was working in 1797-1816 in the fields of astronomy and mathematics. Margaret ran a school for girls in her home, Bryan House, in Blackheath. She believed mathematics and astronomy were important subjects for both genders, and the girls who attended her seminary were schooled in what she termed Natural Philosophy.

Caroline's Miscellany wrote about Mary Fairfax Somerville (1780-1872). This Scottish  mathematician invented often used variables for algebra. In 1826 Mary presented a paper on solar magnetism to the Royal Society. Then she published her book: On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, Physical Geography and Molecular and Microscopic Science.

The articles suggested that the Margaret Bryan & Mary Somerville stories go a long way to prove that at least social & intellectual equality was out there, for those women who had the talent and the ambition, during the Regency era.

That got me thinking. If it was possible for even one woman to study science, it should be possible for find others. Mary King (1827-69) was born in Ballylin Ireland. She and her sisters were educated at home by a governess, as were most upper middle class girls at the time. But in her era, when most women received little encouragement in the hard sciences, Mary King was unusual. Her education was richer because she came from a family where an interest in science was warmly encouraged.

Mary Ward

Mary became a keen astronomer, like her cousin William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse. He was building the Leviathan of Parsonstown in his Birr Castle, a huge reflecting telescope with a 6’ mirror. Mary often visited him at home & sketched each stage of the process. Thus Mary, more than others, observed and chronicled the building of the giant telescope in the castle grounds. These sketches, along with photos taken by Parson’s wife Mary Rosse, were used when the telescope was restored recently. The telescope tube and supporting structure were completed in 1845.

Mary also drew insects, and the astronomer James South observed her doing so one day. She was using a magnifying glass to see the tiny details, and her drawing so impressed him that he immediately persuaded her father to buy her a microscope. For Mary, this was the beginning of a lifelong passion. She began to read everything she could find about microscopy, and became an expert herself.

Mary Ward’s Sketches with the microscope,
first published in Birr Castle in 1857offalyhistoryblog

Universities & scientific societies wouldn't accept women, but Mary remained close to science in any way she could. She frequently wrote to scientists, asking them about papers they had published. And through her famous cousin, William Parsons, Mary met many of the most eminent men of science of the day. Her access to the heart of the learned profession increased in 1848 when Parsons was made President of the Royal Society. Visits to his London home meant she was surrounded by scientists. She couldn’t join the Royal Astronomical Society, but she could be on their mailing list. Irish astronomer Sir William Rowan Hamilton (d1865), helped her as much as he could, especially giving her up-to-date copies of academic journal articles.

In 1854, Mary King married Henry Ward, an Irish peer, Conservative politician and soldier. They had 8 children, 5 of whom survived to a decent age. Henry’s ancestral home, Castle Ward, was a delightful place to live. Built in the 1760s, Castle Ward has dual architecture. While the entrance side of the building is done in a classical Palladian style, the opposite side is early Neo-Gothic. This duality in style continues throughout the interior rooms of the house.

Castle Ward, Gothic facade

Wiki

When Mary wrote her first book, Sketches With The Microscope 1857, she believed that no one would print it because of her gender. She published 250 copies of it privately, and distributed posters to advertise it. The run sold out in weeks, and this was enough to make a London publisher take the risk and make her a proper offer. The book was reprinted many times between 1858 and 1880, and became a bestseller. She wrote two further books, one of which was a beginner’s guide to astronomy called Telescope Teachings 1859, and several articles.

A talented artist, Mary illustrated all her own work. Stephanie Pain in New Scientist described how Mary made her own slides from slivers of ivory, prepared her own specimens and drew her observations in near photographic detail. When Scottish physicist David Brewster wanted microscope specimens, he asked her to make them. He admired her drawings too, and used them to illustrate his papers and books.

In Aug 1869, while travelling in a very modern-looking steam carriage invented by her clever Parson cousin, Mary was thrown from the carriage when it hit a bump. She was crushed by one of the wheels, dying instantly, and became a victim of the world's first automobile accident. Today, her microscope, accessories, slides and books can be found on display in a room dedicated to her in Castle Ward. The early death of this remarkable young scientist was tragic.

Leviathan of Parsonstown at Birr Castle, 

Atlas Obscura

For people who would like to pursue the topic further, I recommend Susan McKenna-Lawlor who wrote Whatever Shines Should Be Observed. It follows the lives of five exceptional, but little known Irish women in the C19th who achieved high recognition in scientific subjects, including Mary Ward. Furthermore the BBC produced a documentary in 1986 called The Wonderful World of Mary Ward in which her first scientific article was re-enacted.

Sir Roger Casement hero, yet still hanged.

Roger Casement (1864–1916) was born near Dublin to a Pro­testant father & Catholic mother! After his parents’ early deaths, he spent his childhood with Protest­ant relations and was raised as an Anglo-Irish Protestant among the Uls­ter landed gentry; he was not a starv­ing rev­ol­ut­ionary.

Sir Roger Casement at trial, 

London, July 1916

He joined Elder Dempster Shipping Line Liverpool as a stew­ard and later became British consul in the Congo. In this time Casement mixed loyalty to the British Empire with a desire to expose the atroc­ities of the brutal Belgian rule in the Congo. His cons­ul­ar duties took him to Portuguese East Af­rica then back to the Congo, where in 1903 he was asked to re­port on alleg­ations of widespread at­rocities un­­der the personal rule of King Leopold of the Belgians. His passionate rep­orts of br­utal forced labour in the upper Congo’s rubber industry led to a gov­ern­men­t­al White Paper in 1904. It caused outrage, lead­ing to rad­ical changes in the Congo, which was formally annexed as a Belgian colony.

Casement then lived in Britain where he joined forces with anti-slavery and anti-colonial movements and helped to establish the Congo Reform Assoc­iat­ion. In 1906 he returned to work as the Brit­ish consul in Brasil, where he saw more barbarity ag­ainst local popul­at­ions. Writer Arthur Conan Doyle, who befriended Casement in London in 1910, wrote The Crime of the Congo, and pledged his sup­port for Case­ment’s campaigns against colonial atrocities.

When Casement went to South America, he wrote further reports on the brutal practices of Peruvian Amazon Co, a British-registered rub­ber company working among the Ind­ians. Again there was a media furore! Awarded a knighthood, Sir Roger became wholly disillusioned with his consular role; he wished to re­tire and to explore his own identity.

Casement backed the Irish Volunteer Force which promoted Home Rule, so he initiated gun running into a Dublin port in July 1914. Be­coming increasingly militant, he travelled to the USA and Germany during the Great War, buying arms and recruiting among Ir­ish pri­s­oners of war for an Irish Brigade to be part of an anti-British in­sur­­rection! His politics had always been radical, but now during the Great War, his negotiations with Germany were unbelievably dangerous.

All Sir Roger’s movements abroad were being tracked by the British Secret Services. It was discovered that when he went to Germany via Norway in 1914-6, he got poor res­p­onses from both the German high command and Irish prisoners of war. Con­vinced that an uprising in Ireland now had no chance of succ­ess, Case­ment went home in a German submarine and was captured in Kerry in Ap 1916.

Then Casement was taken to London for trial in July 1916. Old docu­m­ents were found in his luggage by officers from Brit­ain’s Special Branch under Basil Thomson,  a Scotland Yard commissioner. One document was Casement’s legitimate business as a British agent in Brasil from 1910, while 5 were pers­onal diaries that contained graphic details of his homosexual affairs in Africa & South America.

Post-arrest, the British government used these Black Diaries unscrupul­ously, to drum up support for a treason conviction. Knowing how imp­ort­­ant it was to tarnish Casement’s name, Basil Thomson sent the documents to prominent British and American decision-makers, including the American Ambassador in London.

The trial for his role in Ireland’s Easter Rising was horrible. Irishman George Duffy was app­roach­ed to become Casement’s solicitor, but the partners in his leading London law firm clarified that he'd have to resign if he accepted. As no other London barris­ter was found to defend Casement, Gavan Duffy had to look to his brother-in-law A.M. Sullivan. Both these lawyers had long histories of involve­ment in Irish nation­alism, though they loathed the 1916 revolutionar­ies’ violence. Worse, the prosecution team was led by the very pro-Unionist lawyer F.E Smith. And the case was heard before another ard­ent Unionist, Chief Justice Lord Reading!

Newspapers put Casement's hanging on their front pages

Aug 1916
 
After a quick, failed appeal, Casement was hanged at Pentonville Prison in Aug 1916. Justice hadn’t been done: the Black Diaries were distrib­uted, pros­ec­ution and def­ence teams app­eared to collude, the law was from 1351AD and the appeal judge was a biased, ex-Conserv­at­ive MP.

When WW1 ended, Basil Thomson became Britain’s first Director of Int­elligence; this was a crucial time when the fear of Bolshevism over­took fears of German power. Thomson himself was con­sidered too hard­ line, just as the Irish civil war was ending, given the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Irish Free State in Dec 1921.

When Basil Thomson was sacked, he took copies of Casement’s diaries with him, hoping to supplement his meagre pension. Thom­son passed his cop­ies to a Fleet St reporter, but when the rep­orter tried to publish ex­tracts in 1925, the Home Secretary warned that Thomson would face pro­secution under the Official Secrets Act. Decades passed before the Black Diaries were published in Paris, 1959.

Sir Roger had been a caring human being who, as a result of his exp­er­iences in Africa and South America, raised issues that were crit­ic­al: human rights, corporate duty and environ­mental just­ice. He may have played a minor role in the 1916 Rising, having been isolated in Germ­any seeking guns and men. But he was on the very wrong side in WW1.

Irish President Eamon de Valera speaking at the funeral of Irish nationalist Roger Casement
Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin, 1965.

The Guardian

After a campaign to repatriate his body to Ireland won in March 1965, Casement was buried near Dublin, with a huge crowd. His diaries were placed in the British National Archives Kew in 1994.

Read The Guardian, 2016 by Kevin Grant and “The Irish Volunteer” by Andrew Lycett in History Today, 2016.

Medieval sexual abuse & clerical crimes

From the late 1980s, allegations of sexual abuse of children as­s­ociated with Catholic institutions and clerics in several countries started to be the subject of formal investigations. In Ireland, in the 1990s, a series of criminal cases and Irish gov­ernment enquir­ies established that hundreds of priests had abused thousands of children over the decades.

Catholic sexual abuse cases in Australia have involved convictions, trials and ongoing investigations into allegations of sex crimes committed by Catholic priests and teachers that have come to light in recent decades, along with the growing awareness of sexual abuse within other religious and secular institutions.

A USA grand jury report recorded dozens of Penn priests accused of molesting 1,000 minors in 70 years. Now 12 other American states have announ­ced their own formal investig­ations into Catholic clerical child sexual abuse.

The German Catholic church presented the results of an investig­at­ion into decades of sexual abuse of children in 2018. The report detailed the cases of 3,677 mostly male children in 27 dioceses who were sexually abused since 1946. 1,670 cl­er­ics were implicated. The report detailed how 60% of abusive priests eluded punishment, or were moved to other German parishes to conceal their crimes.

Promiscuous Monks: Monastic Sexual Misconduct in Late Medieval England

Medievalist.net

After the Vatican investigators found crime conceal­ment in Chile, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of five of their bishops. Now special Chilean prosecutors are invest­igating 150 clerics across Chile’s 15 regions. The prosecutors are examining the offences that took place from 1960 on.

But was sexual abuse in the Catholic Church a C20th phenom­enon, ignored because no church had ever investigated its own clerical wrongdoings before 1980? No!

I have cited Emma Wells' paper, Monks behaving badly, as closely as possible. Monastic morality tales displayed a familiar and long lasting cul­t­ural stereo­type: promiscuous and corrupt cleric. Medieval bis­hops, monks, vicars and nuns got and get a bad press in literat­ure – because of their appetite for las­civ­ious­ness, greed and drinking.

Errant Catholic clergymen were a feature of mediev­al life, probably because of the nature of their profession: a] the decision to put boys into the priesthood was made by parents; b] the men lived celibate lives and c] the priests visited families in the privacy of their homes or schools. [Jewish and Islamic clergy were never celibate, so I have excluded them from this post. No doubt they were charged with other wrongdoings].

The problem wasn’t a product of the bishops’ indifference. On the contrary, ensuring that the clergy remained on their pedestal was paramount to the medieval church. In fact the ecclesiastical auth­orities were eager to uphold the highest of standards, and protect themselves from the wrath of God. They established mechanisms for disciplinary action in the case of failure. Across Christendom, monasteries, parishes and colleges were subject to assessments run by their own diocesan bishops.

In Catholic England, records first appeared in late C13th. In the 1430s, in an investigation by Canons Ashby Priory in North­amps, the Bishop’s Commissary found that the monks were indulging in feast­ing and games, frequenting the village inn, skipping choir services and not wearing their monastic habit. In the late Middle Ages, these results were serious: neglected parishioners, damage to the Catholic church’s reputation and some outbreaks of violence. Monk John Shrewesbury from Dorchester Abbey app­arently abducted a woman in 1441 and smuggled her into the mon­ast­ery bell tower in a trunk, where he had carnal relations with her.

In 1500 William Bell, Nottingham’s Greyfriars warden was accused of incontinence/homosexuality against another man. By the 1530s, King Henry VIII was already agitating for the diss­olution of the Catholic monasteries. So if clergymen did drink too much, if they did fornic­ate with prostitutes and if they did gamble with dice, their future was shaky. By the time Henry VIII wielded the axe in 1536, it was all over.

Clergy enjoying sex with each other

Patheos

Investigators exposed the extent of indisc­ret­ions eg from sexual misbehaviour down to inapp­ropriate clothing. The authorities investigated community gossip, documented indis­cret­ions and swiftly punished those found guilty. Wrong doers could expect shaming sentences, ranging from enforced silence, fasting, prison time, floggings, barefoot pilgrimages and excommunication. 

Medieval clergymen also had a bad record of frequenting brothels aka stews. The most notorious were situated in Bankside South London, on land owned and controlled by the bishop of Winchester. 

Although monks and nuns technically led cloistered lives, they were also an important part of wider society. They regularly left cloisters to visit family, conduct business, teach children and enter politics! Most of the secular deacons were members of a non-cloistered rel­ig­ious institution, and many of them lived lives similar to their flocks. They often travelled to other parishes, to administer to the spirit­ual, social and medical needs of the poorest families, but they also lodged in local alehouses!

In the Priory, a medieval monk seduced a nun, who became pregnant and had an illegitimate baby. 

She desperately disposed of the baby in the privy.
From the Miracles de Notre Dame, in Ancient Origins.

In 1531, Bishop of Lincoln John Longland went to the August­inian abbey of Missenden in Bucks. He convened a special tribunal to in­vestigate monastic bad behaviour - drinking, gambling and fornic­ating with prostitutes. A local canon, Robert Palmer, was accused of carnal relations with a married woman. But Palmer claim­ed that it was Abbot John Fox who had shared the woman’s bed. The Abbot was accused of many offences - nepotism, financial misconduct and of ignoring Palmer’s affair with the married woman. After investigat­ions, Longland passed judgment on both Palmer and Fox; Palmer was imprisoned indefinitely and Abbot Fox was suspended from office.

In early C16th, anti-monastic pamphlets were filled with vivid descript­ions of clerical misdemeanours. But this does not mean that late med­ieval clergymen were more tempted by bad behaviour than their predecessors. Rather it shows that the authorities made insp­ections of churches and monasteries specifically to unearth cler­ical failings!

Dr Margaret James Barry - very clever, androgynous surgeon

Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time

by Michael du Preez  and Jeremy Dronfield

Margaret Ann Bulkley's mother, Mary Ann Barry, married Jeremiah Bulkley in 1782 and Margaret was born in Co Cork Ireland (c1795-1865). They lived on Merchant’s Quay where Jeremiah held a government post in the Weigh House, having had three children, a son John, daughter Margaret and another younger daughter.

As a result of the oldest child John’s bad behaviour, Jeremiah ended up in the Debtor’s Prison in Dub­lin. Margaret and her mother Mary Ann became fell into "genteel chaotic poverty", and their only hope lay with Margaret’s maternal uncle, James Barry. He was a famous artist and a member of the Royal Academy in London.

A clever child, Margaret hoped to study medic­ine at univ­ersity, a career forbidden to women then. So in 1809 she travelled with her mother to Edinburgh, carrying a reference from the family friend Lord David Erskine Earl of Buchan; then she enrolled under the name of James Barry (her moth­er’s maiden name) as a very young student of Medic­ine and Lit­erature. From the surviving let­ters, it was obv­ious Mrs Bulk­ley was complic­it in her daught­er’s subterfuge. James graduated in 1812.

Fortunately there were influential family connections. The friend already mentioned, Earl of Buchan, supported the education of clever women. And via Uncle James, young James met General Francisco De Miranda, a Venez­ualian radical who wanted to liberate South America. Once General Francisco De Miranda had lib­er­ated Venezuela, Dr Barry would be able to practise medicine in Venezuela. Alas General Miranda was imprisoned by the Span­ish, and died in prison in 1816. So it was fortunate that Lord Charles Somerset (d1831), the Earl of Buch­an’s close friend, became Governor of the Cape in 1814. Nonethe­less, it must have been a lonely era at university.

Dr Barry moved to London, where he qualified at the Royal College of Surgeons, and in 1813, was commissioned as Regim­ental Assist­ant in the Army med­ical corps. He was posted to the Cape of Good Hope and became close to Govern­or Lord Som­erset who provided a private flat in the vice regal residence.

Soon two sets of incompatible rum­ours began to circulate that Dr Barry and Governor Lord Charles had a close relationship. Firstly that they had an illegal homosexual liaison, so a roy­al commission was set up to investigate the scandal. Lord Somerset returned home to Britain to face his critics. Second­ly while he was serving as Somerset’s physician, rum­ours spread about Dr Barry’s real gender. Some believed Barry and Som­erset were lovers, and even created a baby together.

For another 40 years, Barry served as an Army Surgeon, event­ually attaining the rank of Inspector General HM Army Hosp­it­als. Clearly his career was talented and dedic­ated, focusing on hygiene and preventative med­icine. He was clearly a (rare) doctor who worried about the wel­fare of prisoners, lepers and psychiatric inmates. His modern understanding of leprosy and tropical diseases greatly changed the hospitals in which these illnesses were treated.

It was interesting but not surprising that Dr Barry was con­sid­ered fiercely defensive. I am assuming this was because he was harassed by his colleagues for his high pitched voice and smooth complexion, and because he wore high inserts in his shoes to in­crease his height and wore baggy androgynous clothes. Records tell that he fought duels against his tormentors in defence of his honour, at least one of them being fatal for his opponent.

I do believe that Dr James Barry performed the first Caes­arian section in Africa in which both mother and baby mirac­ulously survived. What is less certain was that the thankful parents named the baby James Barry Munnik Hertzog in the doctor’s honour. Was this the same Barry Hertzog who became a Boer general during the 2nd Boer War and later was Prime Minister, Union of South Africa from 1924–39?

Certainly there were court martials, but Dr Barry continued to rise up the army ranks. As Inspector-General of Military Hosp­itals he spent some months in the Crimea, studying the tragic­ally high death rates in Scutari hospital under Flor­ence Night­­ingale. It was shown that this visit led to sweeping reforms of battlefield medicine, for improved sanit­at­ion and for good qual­ity food for ordinary young sol­d­­iers. No wonder Nightingale, once she met him, thought Dr Barry behaved like an opinionated brute.

He went on to have a very distinguished career as an army surgeon across the British Empire eg in South Africa, Canada, on St Helena and in Trinidad and Tobago.

Forced to retire from ill health in 1864, Barry returned home but did not receive the knighthood that an important army doctor would have normally been given. Was that because his years of service saw with arrests and duels, or because of his gender confusion?   

Dr. James Barry’s headstone, Kensal Green

Dr Barry wanted to be understood as male in life and death.

When he died in 1865, the maid Sophia Bishop laid out the body for the funeral, and made an amazing discovery: Dr James Barry was a woman! She also noticed what appeared to be stretch marks on Barry’s stomach indicating an earlier pregnancy. Spec­ul­ation and scandal began to spread.

Barry was buried in Kensal Green cemetery, London. The grave stone says: Dr James Barry Inspector Gen­eral of Hospitals, died July 1865, aged 70 years. After the funeral, rumours ran wild. But despite Dr James having been Inspector General of Military Hospitals, high­est medical rank in the British Army, there was no post-mortem. The Medical Times also reported that the Army issued no obituary and forbade access to the doctor’s files for 100 years.

Two books to read the history of Dr James Barry. Historian Isobel Rae searched army files and wrote The Strange Story of Dr James Barry: Army Surg­eon and Inspector-General of Hospitals (1958). And Cape Town doctor Michael du Preez traced Barry’s family hist­ory in Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time (2008).

From King Charles II to the Glorious Revolution 1688

King Charles II was crowned at Westminster Abbey, 1661.
Wiki

There was a widely-held belief that British Cath­olics were actively plotting the overthrow of church and state, to establish Britain as a satellite state under the control of an all-powerful Catholic monarch.

In the late 1670s, anxieties were raised by the succession issue. King Charles II (1630–85) had no legitimate offspring, meaning the crown would pass to his brother James, Duke of York, who'd converted to Catholicism.

Whig politicians in Parliament, led by Earl Shaftesbury, promoted exclusion bills to prevent James from taking the throne. But the mass petitions and demonstrations deployed by the king’s opponents gradually alienated some initial supporters of exclusion. So it is interesting that in 1677 James attempted to appease Protestants by allowing his daughter, Mary, to marry the Protestant Prince of Orange, William III.

Charles had to bar his brother from succession yet he very nearly lost control of his government, having to allow his Whig supporters to occupy positions of power. Three general elections led to unmanageable parliaments, so Charles sent James into exile. This proved to be unacceptable to the Whigs and when Charles sickened in 1679, civil conflict threatened. So Charles recovered control of his government, earning a nationwide surge of loyalty. He had made another secret treaty with France, counting on a healthy public revenue from them. Reforms at the Treasury provided the crown with firm administrative control, Charles’ most valuable legacy at home.

King James II’s authority appeared to be secure when he succeeded his late brother in Feb 1685. The new king’s initial promises to defend the existing government in church and state reassured many citizens.

King James’ first parliament was dominated by loyal Tories. Parl­iament even voted James considerable emergency sums to suppress the rebellion raised by Charles II’s illegitimate son, Duke of Monmouth in June 1685. James’ soldiers easily crushed Monmouth’s rebels.

Left: Catholic King James II

Centre: James' Protestant daughter, Queen Mary II

Right: James' Protestant son in law, King William III

Initial support for King James ebbed away once it became clear that he wished to secure a] freedom of worship for Catholics and b] removal of the Test and Corporation Acts so that Catholics could occupy public office. In 1686 James suspended the negative provisions of the Test Acts that had previously imposed civil disabil­it­ies on Catholics and non-conformists. The next year the king issued a Declaration of Indulgence, which suspended penal laws against Catholics and granted acceptance of some Protestant dissenters.

In summer 1687, James formally dissolved Parliament. He wanted to begin a purge of corporations, aimed at producing a pliable parl­iam­ent which would agree to James’ wishes. Naturally these measures were increasing opposed by the Anglican-Tory establish­ment.

In May 1688, seven leading Protestant bishops refused to read the king’s Second Declaration of Indulgence in church. So James had them arrested for sedit­ious libel and taken to the Tower of London.

Seven important English peers made contact with the Dutch leader, Prince William of Orange. They wrote to Will­iam and begged him to intervene militarily, especially since James’ Catholic second wife finally became pregnant. The birth of a healthy male Catholic heir in June 1688 dashed hopes that the crown would soon pass to James’  Protestant daughter Mary (1662–94). The seven peers to pledge their support to the prince, IF he invaded against James.

Even before this letter was sent, William’s main reason for interfering in English affairs was to bring Britain into his war against Louis XIV’s France. Clearly William already began making military prep­ar­ations for an invasion of Britain.

In early Nov 1688, one of the greatest invasion fleets in British history was sailing towards the Devon coast. With 40,000 men aboard 463 ships, Prince William of Orange’s Dutch invasion was very ser­ious. This Protestant prince would topple King James II, secure the Ang­lican faith and save Britain from Catholicism.

But William’s pilot steered too far to the west, missing Torbay. The wind was too strong for them to turn back, but the next port was Plymouth, where James had already posted a garrison. Then the breeze changed; the Protestant Wind proved God was clearly on the Protestant side again. So William was able to turn back to Torbay, and by the time he stepped ashore, the quay was crowded with well-wishers and the Glorious Revolution was safely under way.

James’ army, encamped on Hounslow Heath, had more men than William’s. But news of the Prince’s arrival had sparked off waves of anti-Catholic rioting in towns across Britain. Important defections to William followed - the Duke of Marlborough; James’ son-in-law, Prince of Denmark; and James’ nephew. The worst was when James discovered that his daughter, Princess Anne (1665 –1714), had also joined the Orangists.

Having reached Salisbury in Nov, King James announced he was will­ing to agree to William’s main demand - to call a free parliament. However, the king was now convinced that his own life was in danger and prepared to flee the country. In mid Dec, in the wake of renewed anti-Catholic rioting in London, James tried to escape but was captured in Kent. By now William was now looked upon as the only individual capable of restoring order to the country. So in late Dec 1688, James fled the country with William’s collusion.

Before they were offered the crown, William and Mary were presented with the Declaration of Rights document. This affirmed some cons­tit­utional principles eg the prohibition of taxation without parl­iamentary consent and the need for regular parliaments. Pressure from the now-King William III (1689-1702) also ensured the passage in May 1689 of the Toleration Act. William and Mary agreed and formally accepted the joint-throne in 1689.

Parliament gained powers over taxation; the royal succession; appointments; and the right of the crown to wage war independently. Did Queen Mary and King William truly support these limit­ations? Or were they concessions that William paid, in return for parliament’s financial support for his war against France?

Though the Revolution in England was largely peaceful, the Revolution was secured in Ireland & Scotland by force. In both countries the settlements were politically and relig­iously divisive eg Irish Protestants ignored the big peace terms of the Treaty of Limerick (Oct 1691) and established a monopoly over land-ownership and political power.

So the Glorious Revolution was the underpinning of Whig history, propelling Britain towards constitutional monarchy and parliam­entary democracy. But did the Tories, Scots and Irish believe this version of the Revolution?

NB The Act of Union wasn’t until 1707 but I have used the name Britain even before that date.

NY's Lower East Side, tenements, pushcarts, migrants and modernity.

Crowded tenements

Lower East Side of NY

Pushcars lined Hester St

in front of the shops

                              

Rivington St, difficult for traffic to get through

Postcard from the Blavatnik Archive, Eldridge Museum

The Lower East Side got going in the C19th. In 1818, a market-house was built in the centre of Grand St be­tween Lud­low and Essex Sts, south of the present-day market. The new­comers, from Germany and Ire­land, arrived into NY City en masse by the 1840s-50s. Tenement Mus­eum suggested that 1+ mill­ion people left Ire­land, often landing in NY. Then more of the new Irish arrivals to Man­hattan fled after the Great Famine of 1848. In the 1840s NY’s popul­ation grew by 60%, and grew by another 58% in the 1850s.

The Hist­orical Atlas of NY reported that the Germans arrived in 3 waves: 1] c1.3 mill Germans arrived during the antebellum era (pre-1861); 2] a mass wave followed the Civil War, 1865-79 and 3] the lar­gest wave from 1880 on. Most Germans sett­l­ed in a 400-block area, north of Divis­ion St and east of the Bowery. Along the East Riv­er, this was known as Kleindeutsch­land/Little Germ­any.

In 1843, the Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor de­scribed housing as problematic in size, arrangement, water sup­pl­ies, warmth and ventilation; sewage was also in bad condition. Famil­ies moved in and out of these tenements with­out rep­airs, deteriorating with time. Clearly the over­crowd­ed Lower East produced ser­ious sanit­at­ion problems.

For hundreds of thous­ands of immig­rants, a teeming Lower East Side tene­m­ent was their first home in the Golden Land. Note the Tenement House Law they passed in 1879, seeking to limit the prop­ort­ion of a block that could be built upon.

Most of the Jew­ish immigrants who left Eastern Europe back then, esp­ec­ial­ly Russians, left for economic rea­sons or escaping persecution. Their immig­ration to NY was a perm­anent reloc­ation as most had no cap­it­al to bring with them. They needed the cheapest housing options. The first pushcarts in Hester St arrived in 1886 when the area was facing massive change. The wave of immigration brought 2.5+ million Eastern European Jews to the U.S, a third starting on the Lower East Side.

In the European shtetls, pushcarts had been a common sight. Under Tsarist rule Jews could not own land, and the peddling of goods was one of the few ways of surviving. So on arr­ival to the U.S, pedd­ling was a recommended job. In 1880 a cart rented for 10 cents, cap­able of carrying fish, pickles, clothes and siddurim. And because ped­dlers were their own boss, observant Jews could keep their Sabbath.

Hester St carts, 1935

History Today

By 1900 the carts grew up 25,000+, creating one of the most iconic shopping districts. The Street Vendor Project said the street vend­ors had to peddle a range of goods, while dealing with licensing, discrim­in­at­ion and the daily st­ruggles of running a moving busin­ess. Yet the story of the pushcart was an int­egral part of immigrants’ experience, bringing the daily necessities to the front doors of the tenements.

Photo journ­al­ist Jacob Riis’ became an important tool for docum­enting immigrants’ hardships. He publish­ed How the Ot­her Half Lives 1890, inviting the mid­dle classes to walk al­ong NY’s imm­ig­rant enclav­es, where crowds jostled and shouted in foreign tongues. Thus the unsafe living conditions of the Lower East Side became a larger public con­cern. The proper American way to shop meant going into stores where the mer­ch­an­d­ise was neat and prices were clearly marked. The proper shop­s were blocked and the progressive ref­orm­ers worried that carts were part of an exploitative system.

The NY Times ran an article about pushcarts in 1893, disparaging the entire Jewish and Lower East Side immigrant community. “This neigh­bour­­­hood, filled by the people who claim to have been driven from Pol­and and Russia, was perhaps the filthiest place on the continent”.

Riis and Lillian Wald’s concerns about immigrants appeared in the NY Herald in 1895; it de­s­cribed the frightful con­ditions they found in the Lower East Side. This led to the Tene­ment House Com­m­ittee making maps in 1896, to conduct a formal investigation of tenement houses: the population of each block, plus the number of typhoid­ fever, TB, scarlet fever and diphtheria cases. In resp­on­se, the city passed the Tenement House Law of 1901. Riis also showed the app­al­ling reality of neigh­bour­hood life in Battle of the Slum 1902.

With the Great Depression, new public works started. The City’s Dept of Buildings demol­ished some brick tenement buildings along Essex St, between Del­an­cey and Riv­ington Sts. By the 1930s Mayor Fior­ello La­Guardia ruled that the open pushcart market was ant­iquated and unsan­itary; ped­dlers were a danger to them­sel­ves and to others, by creating traffic con­gestion. Using fed­eral money, LaGuardia wanted to create new indoor markets and in his att­em­pts to profession­al­ise push­cart vendors, street busin­ess drastically declined. Two ar­ch­it­ects were comm­issioned by the Dept of Markets to design the Essex St Mar­k­et and vital fed­eral funds were made av­ail­­able via Pres Frank­lin D Roose­velt’s Works Progress Administ­ration/WPA.

Mayor Fior­ello La­Guardia, 1940

dedicated to ending pushcarts, making the Lower East Side safe & modern 

Wiki

Essex St Market, opened Jan 1940

www.essexmarket.nyc

In Jan 1940, 3,500 locals gathered on Essex St for the opening of a new retail market. Mayor LaGuardia arrived, made a speech and ins­pect­ed the outside of the new red-brick building, the 4th indoor mun­icipal retail space built during LaGuardia’s rule. Then the market doors opened as hundreds of would-be in­door consum­ers rushed in, and the old era of East Side push­cart mark­ets ended. Soon after the Essex St Market opened in early 1940, the area changed. Many old families moved to Brook­lyn and Puerto Ricans began to move in.

Conclusion 

For 180 years 3 blocks of land transformed from farm estate, to tene­ment housing, to awful slums, to an enclosed public market. I thank Alexandra Hall and Marjorie Ingall and recommend people visit the Tenement Museum,

Republic of Ireland's best ever gift to Australia - football star Jim Stynes!

When the Irish Experiment was conceived at the Melbourne Football Club in the early 1980s, Gaelic Football was seen as more like Australian Rules than soccer, rugby or gridiron. The experiment was very positive, especially for Jim Stynes (1966-2012) who was born into a large Dublin family. Jim attended Ballyroan Boys School and as an 8-year-old start­ed competition football. He and his two brothers attended De La Salle in Church­town, a school that favoured rugby over Gaelic foot­­ball. So Jim played rugby for his school and Gaelic football for his local club.

Jim Stynes

champion ruckman in Melbourne colours, 1997

ABC News

Jim was inspired by a 1980 AFL* film, The Club. A few years later, Stynes responded to a local ad for the Melbourne Football Club that off­er­ed full scholarships to play football and study here. Stynes had to im­p­r­ess Mel­b­ourne coaches at an Irish training camp seek­ing Gae­lic foot­ballers, taller than 183cm, with the skills to be­come elite Aus­t­r­alian footballers. Stynes was an Irish Experiment success!!

Did the family approve of young Jim’s decision? He moved to Aus­t­ralia in Nov and his debut was in Melbourne’s Under 19s team, strug­gling a bit. He might have been a lonely teen having some trouble adapting, but he persevered! Debuting in the AFL* in 1987, he played a record of 244 con­secutive games between 1987-98. Young Stynes apparently changed the way that the rucking role was played, and within a couple of years, his ab­ility to run and easily win possessions was noted. One year he am­as­s­ed an average of 26 possessions per match, great for a big player!!

In 1990 Stynes was named Melbourne’s vice-captain. He also played for Ireland against Australia in the International Rules series. Even bet­­ter he won the Brownlow Medal in 1991, for being the fairest and best AFL footballer of the year across Aust­ral­ia.

How did an injured footballer not miss ANY games? In 1993 Jim should have missed 6 weeks with a com­p­ound rib fracture, yet he played on! But to keep on playing, Stynes endured a rigorous fitness test where tough Demon train­ers ran into him during a 20-minute training session; the epitome of mental toughness as well. The next year he sus­t­ained a medial ligament tear, but again played on.

Jim Stynes statue
in the Avenue of Legends, outside the MCG

2014. ABC

In fact he was Melbourne’s best pl­ayer 3 years in a row: 1995-7 so he rec­eived 3 Best and Fairest Awards. Stynes re­p­re­s­ented Victoria for the first time in State of Origin football; altogether he played in 10 State teams for Victoria. Stynes ended his career with 264 matches, second only to God/Robert Flower as Mel­b­ourne’s recordholder.

When Stynes announced his retirement in 1998, Melbourne fans every­where were grief stricken, including myself. And he also ended his play­ing career with the Australian National team, with whom he’d played 8 Int­er­nat­ional Rules matches. In 1999 he became assistant coach for the Australian Inter­national Rules team.

Stynes became Melbourne Club President in 2008, heading up a new-look board when the club was in debt. He rebuilt an experienced team, and oversaw major debt reduction.

Note Jim Stynes’ place in the Australian sports pantheon of champions, added to the Avenue of Legends outside the MCG**, largest sports stad­ium in the southern hemisphere. He stands with 14 other Australian stars, including tennis and cricket players, scul­p­ted in bronze by Lis Johnson.

Community Work
Jim was committed to phil­an­thropy, using his high profile to co-found The Reach Found­at­ion with film director Paul Currie in 1994. Their initiat­ive encouraged the hidden-abilities in youngsters to exper­ience a better life; that ev­ery young person should have whatever support was needed. Reach impacted positively on 500,000 young Australians via schools, workshops and weekends away, and worked with teachers and youth workers.

His 1995 autobiography, Whatever It Takes, reflected the importance of this community work. Furthermore Stynes co-wrote the children’s self-help book Heroes (2003) and became a member of the Fed­eral Minister for Youths Comm­it­tee. Then Stynes co-wrote anot­h­er children’s self-help book, Finding Heroes (2005) and became a member of the Federal Minister for Educations Advisory Group. He won an Order of Aust­ralia in 2007.

Happily Jim married Samantha in 2000, and had two children: Tiernan and Matisse. And he realised his own teenage dream of a university educ­at­ion: Bachelor of Social Science (RMIT Uni); Bachelor of Education (Dea­kin Uni); and honorary Doctorate (Aust­ralian Catholic Uni).

In July 2009, Jim Stynes was diagnosed with cancer and given months to live. He was 42, had been healthy, fit and intolerant of ill­ness. In July, he held a media conference to ann­ounce that he had back cancer.. which had spread to his brain. And he be­came the first pers­on in Aust­ral­ia to trial Ipilmumab, a new immune-stimulation treatment. Then he had surgery to remove his brain tumours.

Thousands of fans at Jim Stynes' funeral

2012. Herald Sun.

Stynes’ final legacy was his book My Journey (2012). Tough in de­tail, Jim wrote a mov­ing, insp­iring story of a life lived fearlessly. And he participated in the tv docum­entary about his life: Every Heart Beats True.

He passed away in 2012 at his Melbourne home, at 45, and last res­p­ects were paid at a state funeral. Thank you Ireland for our Australian hero.

Jim Stynes Pedestrian and Cycling Bridge
links North Wharf, World Trade Centre, MCG and city centre, opened 2014

oculus

*Australian Football League
** Melbourne Cricket Ground

C17th Spanish artist & pandemic: Murillo

A crucial commission in the mid-1640s for the Franciscan monastery in Seville established Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s reputation, to the extent that Murillo displaced Zurbaran as the key Seville painter and ran a thriving workshop in the city.

In 1646-52, the bubonic plague hit Seville. The city had warning and could have gone into lockdown earlier, like Cádiz. But whet­her through economic need or negligence, Spain’s largest city rem­ained open for business. Within a year, a quarter of the population had died and others fled the city. Floods and famine compound­ed the crisis, and it was clear that God was punish­ing Sev­il­le. But from calamity came opportunity. As penance, merchants deploy­ed their vast wealth for the glorification of God. Murillo gained.

Beside Murillo’s many grand commissions for churches and cath­ed­rals was an intimate narrative cycle of paintings depicting the Parable of the Prodigal Son. The story in Luke told the tale of a wilful younger son who demanded and Received His Por­t­ion of Inher­it­ance and left home to live in luxury. He squandered it all and was reduced to working as a swineherd in a bitter famine. Alone & hungry, he understood his folly and returned to his father to beg for forgiveness & work. Despite the resentment of his older, more obedient brother, his father welcomed him back with open  arms.

Murillo, Receiving His Portion (1660s). 

Murillo, The prodigal son left home (1660s). 

The tale of suffering, repentance and forgiveness clearly appealed to a Seville-based patron in the pandemic. While the subject was al­­ready popular in northern Europe, this series was the first of its kind in Spain. Yet the 6 important works long languished in relative obscurity. After an 8-year restoration campaign, fin­ally see the results in an exhib­ition at the National Gallery of Ireland, until late Aug 2020.

The paintings were lit to reveal Murillo’s signature vaporous brushwork and vibrant palette. The display was intimate, reflecting the likely setting of the works in the house of an unknown patron. Note the contextual mat­er­ial, especially Jacques Callot’s engrav­ings from 1635, which Murillo reinterpreted for some of his works.

The artist set the story in C17th Andalusia, and the unknown patron would have seen much he recognised. The elegantly dressed prodigal in The Prodigal Son Feasting closely resembled those New World heirs who spent lavishly in the brothels and bars of Seville. 

Murillo, The Prodigal Son Feasting (1660s).

See The Prodigal Son Driven Out. The man, impoverished and clothes in tatters, was cast out of a brothel. The furious court­esans wielded brooms and pikes, and the wizened madame cursed him from the doorway. While rare in art, the prodigal son story was a firm favourite among Spanish Golden Age playwrights.

Murillo, The Prodigal Son Driven Out (1660s).

Murillo, The Prodigal Son Feed­ing Swine (1660s). 

Hunger reigned and the barefooted wretch in The Prod­igal Son Feeding Swine, an imagine of gloom and desolation that would have been a common enough sight during and after the plague. The conservation work, said the experts, was a great success. Much of Murillo’s fine sfumato and fluid brushwork remained intact. Technical analys­is has uncovered a significant pentimento in Feed­ing Swine. Behind the son’s head, Murillo had painted a ruined cas­tle. Its ominous pres­ence filled the horizon, but Murillo clearly didn’t care for it and opted instead for a desolate landscape. Such a major alteration was unusual for the artist, so the exhibition illustrated this by including a full-size X-ray display.

In fact the entire cycle was a morality play in oil, each scene com­ing together to reveal the story and the folly of the pro­digal’s actions. Early in the paintings’ history the final scene, The Return of the Prodigal Son, was separated from the group. When the Earl of Dudley bought the other five for a fortune, he was det­erm­ined to reunite them. Un­for­tun­ately for him, the missing picture had been acquired by Queen Isab­ella II who in 1856 presented it to Pope Pius IX. 

Murillo: Return of the Prodigal Son (1660s).

Murillo’s cycle ended in the prodigal's tearful return. Mur­il­lo may have chosen to emphasise the charitable aspect of the par­able because of the nature of the commission during an active pan­demic. The Return of the Pro­digal Son was one of the huge canvases paint­ed for the Church of the Hospital of Saint George in Seville for the home­less & hungry. Murillo's model was the life around him; part of the appeal of this canvas lay in its human touches, even in terrible times.

The National Gallery of Ireland concluded: The series started when Murillo’s style had quite softened from its early stages. One of the founders of the Spanish Academy of painting, Murillo init­ially used Zurb­ar­an’s dark Caravaggesque art. Murillo's great talent for dramatic painting was apparent in this monumental Pro­digal Son series, an allegory of repentance and divine forgive­ness. And to underscore the drama, the images were reminiscent of a well-staged theatre piece. So what is the connection with the current coronavirus pandemic? The parable of the Prodigal Son was a cure for despair. The story could bring a spark of light to the imp­ris­oned criminals, for after their period of feeding the swine, they could live a new life in the love of Christ. Presumably, so could we moderns.

All images are from the National Gallery Ireland, Dublin.

32 years to prove the dingo took Azaria Chamberlain. Shame Australia :(

Lindy Chamberlain (b1948) is a New Zealander who married New Zealand-born Michael Chamberlain (1944–2017) in Nov 1969. For the first five years of their marriage they lived in Tas­mania, then in northern Queensland where Michael served as minister of Mount Isa's Seventh-day Adven­tist Church. Their children were Aidan (b1973), Reagan (b1976) and Azaria (bJune 1980).

When they were having a family holiday camping at Uluru/Ayers Rock in the Northern Territory in 1980, their infant daughter Azaria went missing. Lindy saw a dingo, a native Australian dog, leave the tent where her baby had been sleep­ing. Dingo tracks were seen around and inside the tent and blood from the infant was found on the tent mattress, on the tent, near the carry-basket, and next to dingo tracks. What is more, three people not related to the family heard the cry of Azaria on the night she disappeared.


A hungry dingo

Shortly after the alarm was raised, Aboriginal and white trackers following the dingo prints saw drag marks in the sand. In two plac­es there was a shallow depression in the sand where a bundle had been set down while the animal rest­ed. The depressions held the imprint of a knitted garment, where there were small dark patches in the sand, perhaps blood.

For those who’d been with the Chamberlains that day, or held a wake with them that night, there was no question that the Ch­am­ber­lains were a loving family. Clearly that they had just exper­ien­c­ed the loss of their daughter and sister under unthinkable circumstances.

Yet the fact that the Chamberlains were Seventh-Day Adventists led to biz­arre rumours and theories. It was said, for example, that Advent­ists believed in sacrificing a child to atone for sin and that Azaria's name meant Sacrifice in the Wilderness. It does not!

Members of the media and police helped spread the rumours. They stated that no baby, since European settlement started in Austral­ia, had ever been taken by a dingo. At least not if the parents were watchful.

The first inquest in Dec 1980 found that Azaria had died in a dingo attack, and the Coroner chastised the police for presenting shoddy evidence against the Chamberlains. The coroner had to be correct­ed!! Eight months later, in the nation­wide Oper­ation Ochre, the Chamberlain’s home was searched and large quant­ities of items were taken by police.

Lindy and Azaria on the Rock

So it surprised no one that Lindy was still being accused of kill­ing baby Azaria, even though the prosecution case was circumstant­ial. In fact during the 1980s, discussion about Azaria's disappear­ance rarely focused on the facts; just on Lindy's innocence or guilt.

The police visited every eyewitness back in their home states, asking for state­ments. But as soon as the eye witnesses began to describe what they had seen or heard, the police told them that they did not want to hear anything about a dingo. This was, after all, a murder invest­igation. The police expected an early con­fession from Lindy; there would be no need for a trial.

The second inquest in Dec 1981 made no finding, but bound the Chamber­lains over. The police did not get their confession! Based on evidence that later turned out to be faulty, Lindy was found guilty of first degree murder and her husband of helping con­ceal the crime. She received a life sentence with no parole; he got a three year suspended sentence. Lindy’s fourth child was born in gaol.

In Apr 1983, the Federal Court unanimously rejected their appeal and although the Chamberlains had fought to prove their innocence, they had reached the end of all legal means available to them.

I have no idea why the Northern Territory suddenly bowed to mount­ing pressure, releasing Lindy and in June 1987 establishing a Royal Comm­ission to review all the evidence. But thank goodness they did. After fourteen months, the Royal Commis­sion Justice handed down his finding and cleared the Chamber­lains of all guilt.

Still, even though the first Coroner had said he believed a dingo responsible, and the Royal Commission and Federal Court agreed, the NT government would not agree. So in 1995, confirm­ing that none of the Chamberlains were in any way respons­ible for Azaria’s death, this coroner ruled that the cause of her death could not be determined. Why?? All of the key witnesses were still alive, the testing still available, and the Royal Commission did enormous research, finally saying that it had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt that a dingo had not taken Azaria.

Ultimately, the Chamberlains’ convictions were quashed and they were exonerated, but not before Lindy had served three years in prison for Azaria’s murder. Four years later they received compens­ation. Following their exoneration, the Chamberlains' relationship ended and they divorced in 1991. Three years later, Michael Chamb­erlain remarried and in 1996 had another daughter.

The NT Coroner’s office announced a fourth inquest in Dec 2011, and in June 2012 the Coroner deliv­er­ed her finding that Azaria had indeed been taken by a dingo. Even though Lindy’s conviction had been quashed in 1988, it was not until 2012 that the public felt that Lindy had been fully exonerated.

An interesting postscript just emerged in 2019! The parents of a 14-month-old boy who was snatched by a dingo on Fraser Island have told their story. The dingo managed to get in­to the camper­van while the family was sl­eeping and carried the baby by his neck into the bush. Luckily his screams woke the parents who found the child - punctured with bite marks and with a fractured skull.

The family standing next to their Torana car
on the road to Uluru/Ayers Rock
The 1976 car is now in the National Museum of Australia

The controversy continues today. The National Museum of Australia in Canberra worked with Lindy Chamberlain to compile a collection of 350+ objects related to the case. This Museum displays the baby’s pink sundress, matching pants and white socks. And complete archive of 182 courtroom drawings from the 1982 criminal trial was acquired by the Museum in 2011. Finally the family’s 1977 Torana played a key role in the convictions with forensic evidence, so it too went to the Museum.

Martello towers and maritime forts across the globe

The first Martello Tower I ever saw was on a tour of Saint John in Canada, as we will see. But I have relied on LW Cowie for more detailed information.

These curved forts first spread across Europe, inspired by the Genovese defence system at Mortella Point in Corsica. Built from 1565 on, Corsican coastal towers were built to protect the villages from brutal Barbary-coast pirates. The towers and their watchmen were paid for by local villagers, and whenever a pirate threat was seen, watchmen alerted the locals by lighting a fire on the tower’s roof. Later the Genovese built another generation of circular towers, used against other foreign invasions.

Although close to the French coast, the island of Jersey wanted to remain British and thus constantly feared French invasion via the coastal bays. In 1779 there was an unsuccessful French attack in St Ouen’s Bay and in 1781, hundreds of French troops landed and marched on the capital, St Helier. Strengthening coastal defences became a priority. The Governor of Jersey planned to build 30 round towers to protect the island's coast line, a’ la Corsica. Although Jersey did get 22 of its towers, it took the British Navy years to realise what their defensive value might be. Some surviv­ing Jersey towers are now used as exhibition space for adjacent wildlife conservation areas.

Portelet Tower, Jersey

built in 1808 on a tidal island

Carleton Martello Canada interior, now a museum.

A guard room for 13 men, their beds, a dining table and a cannon.

In 1793 the British government received an appeal from General Pasquale de Paoli, the leader of the Corsican insurgents who were fighting against French troops. British ships were sent there but the only secure anchorage in the Gulf of San Fiorenzo was commanded by a stone tower. To defeat the French in 1794, the Mortella Point fort was captured by the land-based British military forces, largely because the Corsican’s cannons were facing seaward and couldn't change direction fast enough. When the British withdrew in 1803 they blew up the tower, leaving a wreck. But they liked the Corsican fort and went on to replicate the design at home.

How quickly they were needed! Early in 1805, a series of strong sites were being built along the Irish and English coast-lines, to defend against Napoleon’s army lined up across the Channel. By the time the Napol­eon­ic threat ended in 1815, 103 English towers were fully funct­ion­ing, mainly on S.E and Sth coasts. You can still see 45 of them in Essex and Suffolk etc to­day. Two supporting forts were built at Dymch­urch in Kent (now a museum) and Eastbourne in East Sussex.

In Ireland, they were concentrated around Dublin Bay, and Cork Harbour on the south coast. The West Cork islands of Garnish, Glengarriff and Bere, along Ireland's southwest coastline, have intact towers that can still be easily visited.

Carrick Hill Martello, Ireland

Built in 1805

The British towers were c40’ in height and were 2-3 storeys high. The thick round walls of solid stone­work had two great advant­ages. 1] they were very resistant to enemy cannon fire and 2] the garrison of men who lived there had complete 360 degree views from inside.

The wide roofs made a solid base to hold a rotating cannon on a pivot. Martellos used the ground floor as a stockroom where supplies of ammunition, food and water were kept; a cistern within the fort provided rain water. The first floor provided accommod­ation for 24 men plus 1 officer, plus a separate room for cooking. Fireplaces were built into the wall on the first floor for heating, bathing and cooking.

The Channel Islands had fortifications that included castles, forts, Martello towers, artillery batteries and seawalls. These is­lands were the only part of British soil to be occupied by the Ger­mans during WW2 and German soldiers quickly realised that the towers could be adapted for their own defence. The Martello tower at Fort Saumerez on Guernsey, for example, had a German Observation tower added during WW2 and the tower at Bel Royal Jersey was strengthened by a concrete bunker.

Guernsey Martello Tower

Refortified by German soldiers during WW2

Martello towers were built in Canada (Halifax, Saint John, Québec City and Kingston) during violent times with the USA, particularly the 1812 War. The Carleton Martello Tower in Saint John New Brunswick survived, featuring a restored powder magazine, restored barracks and museum exhibition spaces. The tower's roof has a perfect view of Saint John’s city and its harbour.

Of Halifax’s five towers in Nova Scotia, visitors can see the Prince of Wales Tower, the oldest round fort in North America. It was built in 1796 and was used as a powder magaz­ine. Restored, it too is a National Heritage site. The Duke of York Tower was built in 1798. The Duke of Clarence Martello Tower stood on the Dartmouth shore.

Of Quebec’s four Martello towers, Tower #1 stands on the Plains of Abraham, overlooking the St Lawrence River. It has been restored as a summer museum.

Six Martello towers were built at Kingston Ontario to defend its har­bour and naval shipyards during the Oregon Boundary Crisis. Murney Tower and the tower at Point Frederick, once serving against marine att­acks, are now summer museums. Fort Frederick Ontario had the most highly structured def­en­c­es: earthen ramparts and a limestone curtain wall. The Shoal Tower, the only tower surrounded by water, stood in Kingston's Confederation Basin. Cath­cart Tower, the 4th tower, stood on Cedar Island near Point Henry. The Oregon Boundary Crisis might have ended quickly, but the American Civil War made the Canadians fearful again. So the towers once again got armed up.

The last Martello tower in the British Empire was in Australia; Fort Denison, built on a small island in the centre of Sydney Harbour. Construction began in 1839 when two American warships crept into Sydney Harbour. The threat of foreign attack made the government carefully examine the harbour's limited defences. Re-construction in 1855 again provided Sydney with naval protect­ion, this time against the threat of a naval attack by Russians dur­ing the Crimean War (ended 1856). Fort Denison still enjoys 360 degree views of Sydney and operates as a museum and gun powder store.

Defensive towers in the USA were concentrated on the east coast. They were built in the harbours of Portsmouth in New Hampshire, Charleston in South Carolina, Key West in Florida and one or two others that did not survive. Although the Key West towers were constructed with different building materials and in a different design from those in Britain and Canada, the Garden Club (west tower) and the Museum (east tower) were added to the nation's National Register of Historic Places.

Faroe Islands, the Vikings and the Shetlands

The Faroe Islands archipelago lies halfway between Norway and Ice­land, 320 kilometres off the NE Scottish coast of Great Britain. The Faroe Islands were part of the Kingdom of Norway until 1814. when the Treaty of Kiel granted Denmark control over the Faroes in 1814, along with other ex-Norwegian regions: Greenland and Iceland. Since then the Faroe Islands have remained a part of Denmark, self-governing since 1948.

How close were the histories of the Faroes population to the histor­ies of the populations in Scandinavia or Scotland? And when did the first Christian inhabitants of the Faroe Islands settle? Saint Brend­an (484–578), an Irish monk, first described the Faroes in his written chronicles. Another Irish monk of the early C9th described "hermits from our land of Ireland" who had lived on the northerly islands of Britain for almost a century until the arrival of Norse pirates. Note that alth­ough the islands’ Celtic Christian slabs and crosses seem to date from c850 AD, the official conversion date for the islands did not occur until 999 AD.

Even if the Norse settlers did not come from Scandinavia directly, it did not matter. The Norse communities around the Irish Sea, including Scotland's Shetland and Orkney islands, were still seen as rugged invaders against whom there was no defence.

The Viking Age (800–1066 AD) was the era in Northern European history when Scandinavian Norse­men moved over waters for seasonal raids, permanent conquest and flourishing trade. No area escaped the dragon ships that filled local citizens with awe or horror. In this period, the Norsemen settled in Scot­land, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Newfoundland, Iceland and even furth­er afield eg Normandy.

Shetlanders celebrating their Viking heritage

with the Up Helly Aa festival

 In the Faroes, Viking influence is seen in the language, the place names, establishment of a Norwegian parliament in the C10th and the Saga Museum in Vestmanna. It would be useful to know how many settlers did not like King Harald I of Norway (850-932) and left Norway to settle instead in the Faroes. They certainly brought the Old Norse language to the Faroes and maintained it as the local language. And because the Norsemen were not celibate as the Irish monks had been, the population started increasing.

Since the Vikings originally established their parliament on the Tórshavn peninsula, Tórshavn has been the capital and largest city with a current population of 20,000. But it was not always important; in fact until the C18th, the settlement was very small. Only then did it become a centre for international trade, the seat of the bishop, a modern harbour and the site for regular markets. Today the Tourist Guide suggests that travel­l­ers enjoy the cultural events in cosy cafés by the harbour, concerts on the pedestrian street and in the old church, local paintings and sculpture at the Faroe Islands Art Museum, and the beautiful Nordic House packed with Scandinavian culture and esprit.

Tórshavn, capital of the Faroes.

Boating and fishing are always close at hand

Not far away are Scotland’s Shetland Islands which hover above the North Atlantic and lie closer to Scandinavia than to Scotland. In fact they were part of Scandinavia for 600 years, starting when Norwegian king Harald annexed Orkney and Shetland in 875. Only in 1469 was Shetland pledged by King Christian of Norway as the dowry of his daughter Margaret when she married King James III of Scot­land. The islands were soon directly annexed to the crown of Scotland.

In Shetland locals love Up Helly Aa, a mid winter fire festival celebrating their Viking heritage. The festival in­cl­udes the burning of a replica longship and copious amounts of alcohol.

Travelling to Orkney and Shetland is easy as NorthLink Ferries have daily sailings into the Scottish mainland. These Scottish islands are in turn linked with Denmark, Norway, the Faroes and Iceland by weekly ferries in summer. A heavenly curtain of coloured light, aurora borealis, can best be seen in the Arctic sky from October to January inclusive.

Aurora borealis/northern lights

as seen in the Faroes

The connections between Faroe Islands and the Scottish islands will continue into the future. Faroe is one of the world’s leading nations in producing sustainable electricity, with the majority of their electricity com­ing from renewable energy sources – wind and tidal power.

And the modern oil industry? Oil explor­ation got going in the Faroe Islands in 1993, and since then the industry has been busy with data acquisition, scientific work and the drilling of exploration wells. But note a strange event. As a result of the oil revenue and the cultural links with Norway, a small independence mov­ement developed in the Shetlands. It saw as its model the Faroe Islands in its relationship with Denmark. And the creation of flag of Shetland, shaped in the Nordic cross, marked the anniv­ers­ary of the transfer of Shetland from Norway to Scotland!

When more oil is discovered and exploited in the North Sea, the ind­ustry will boom. As Scotland is the closest nation with an existing oil industry, the new site at Rockall in the Atlantic was declared to be Scottish. But ownership of Rockall oil and fishing rights is disputed, between the UK, Faroe Islands via Denmark, Ireland and Iceland.

Locate the Faroe Islands in relation to 

Norway, Denmark, Shetland Islands and Iceland

I have read many Scottish mystery writers before eg Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Stuart MacBride etc and found them dark, gritty and rather scary, but I was not familiar with Ann Cleeves' Shetland series. So now I am watching Shetland, a BBC Scotland crime drama series on tv starring Douglas Henshall as Detective Inspector Jimmy Perez. Yes the series is dark, and the landscapes are rugged, but the Shetland stories and characters are well worth watching.