October 2, 1874 --- The Regent's Canal Explosion

A tremendous blast shatters the pre-dawn stillness across North London. According to The Spectator, "All London was at the window in its nightdress on Friday morning." The explosion occurred just after 5.00 a.m. in the Regent's Canal aboard the Tilbury, a barge hauling nuts, coffee and "the perilous combination of two or three barrels of petroleum and about five tons of gunpowder." The explosion could be heard 25 miles away and dead fish rained from the sky in the West End.

The three hapless bargees aboard the Tilbury died of fearful wounds but incredibly there were no other deaths or serious injuries. It could have been so much worse had the accident happened a few miles to the East where the barge glided through the sleeping slums of Camden Town and Islington. Instead, it takes place near the North Gate to Regent's Park beneath the Macclesfield bridge. The bridge contained most of the blast, however the rush of the air knocked out windows as far away as St. John's Wood.

The homes along the Park's northern terraces are heavily damaged. The streets are soon filled with the dazed occupants and the curious drawn to the scene; one distraught homeowner complained to The Times that the crowd appeared quite too merry for the occasion. As people wander through the rubble and confusion, imagine the plight of the creatures at the nearby Zoological Gardens. According to one report, the explosion "caused great commotion amongst the animals ... and their howling added considerably to the excitement." Thank the Lord that the glass cages housing the zoo's collection of poisonous vipers were not damaged for Friday is their-feeding day and the idea of more than a hundred hungry snakes loose in the capitol city proved troubling for many, even as an afterthought.

The inevitable inquest which followed concluded that the blast was caused by the bargees striking a match to light a morning pipe or cook their tea, the flame igniting the "vapors of the benzoline." The canal managers were condemned for gross negligence in permitting the "highly imprudent and improper" practice of carrying petroleum and gunpowder aboard the same barge.

The Times had the last word, "This explosion has revealed the fact that London has for years been traversed in some of its most populous and wealthy quarters by fleets of torpedoes."

October 1, 1874 --- The Queen is Not Amused.

The Diaries of Charles Greville are published in seven volumes and cause immediate excitement. A longtime courtier, going back to the Regency, Sir Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville had died in 1865, leaving a coded diary rich in period detail. 

The published diary was read avidly for its comments on society and prominent personages that were seldom flattering. The Queen is particularly angry at references to her uncles and predecessors.
 
Greville  on George IV: "a more contemptible, cowardly, unfeeling, selfish dog does not exist than the King!"

On William IV: "distinguished by a thousand extravagances of language and conduct, to the amusement of all who witnessed his strange freaks... something of a buffoon."

Even worse for the present Monarch, Greville remarked upon the coolness between the Queen and her eldest son, the Prince of Wales: "The hereditary and unfailing antipathy of our sovereigns to their heirs apparent seems thus early to be taking root and the Queen does not much like the child."

The Queen denounced Greville's diary as being in "disgracefully bad taste." She wrote to Prime Minister Disraeli; she calls the diaries "dreadful and really scandalous... the tone in which he speaks of royalty is most reprehensible." She demanded the P.M. ensure that the work is "severely censured and discredited." While Disraeli agreed, telling the Queen that "the book is a social outrage," he could do little more.

In private, Victoria admitted William IV was "undignified and peculiar and not highly gifted," but, she insisted, "very honest and anxious to do his duty." The Quarterly Review, staunchly conservative, joined in condemnation: "If contemporary history cannot be written without the aid of such memoirs, we had rather do without contemporary history - we can wait!" On the other hand, the liberal Edinburgh Review praised Greville for his "inimitable penetration and ... felicity of style, the rarest qualities."

The Greville diaries are published almost simultaneously with the official Life of the Prince Consort by Theodore Martin. In a letter to Mr. Gladstone, Victoria boasted that the anointed Albert's Life is "so pure and bright, [it] presents a favorable and useful contrast to this most scandalous publication."

A sketch of Greville from the National Portrait Gallery.

September 30, 1899 --- Death of an Aeronaut

Percy Pilcher is fatally injured in a "flying" accident at Market Harborough.

The 32-year old Scot had been one Briton's leading aeronauts, experimenting with "flight" for five years using a glider - a bamboo frame covered with sailcloth. He wrote, "I ran to meet the wind with the front of the wings depressed somewhat... then raising the front edge a little, I am able to take a long soar down a slight incline." For greater height and distance, he had horses pull the glider and, further, had been experimenting with a small 4.5 horsepower motor to drive a screw propeller for the first true "free flight."

This day, Pilcher hopes to impress the eccentric MP, Henniker Heaton, who had expressed an interest. It could mean government support for Pilcher's work.  The day dawns wet and windy and Pilcher must wait until late afternoon for better conditions. Finally, Pilcher's horse-drawn glider, the Hawk, lifts off, quickly reaching a height of 60 feet. Suddenly, a cracking sound is heard and the Hawk "fell to earth with a terrible thud, Mr. Pilcher being underneath the wreckage." Badly injured, Pilcher never regained consciousness and died two days later.

The crash is blamed on "a knot coming loose on the rudder, which necessitated a sudden movement on the part of the occupant to re-establish the equilibrium of the machine, thus bringing an unwonted strain on a certain spar, which parted and occasioned the collapse."  Pilcher's death is not widely noted, although The Spectator conceded that the young man's experiments "have shown that human success in [flight] is a possibility of no very distant achievment."

Today, Pilcher is placed in the first rank, "the only man who by temperament, training and achievment could have anticipated the Wrights in powered flying." Less than a year before his death, Pilcher wrote, "In America, experiments are continually being made, and it would be heartrending not to try and keep one's place in the work, that is being done."

Photograph from Pilcher-Monument.co.uk

September 29, 1850 --- From the Flaminian Gate

On a Sunday in Rome, Pope Pius IX proclaims the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England, dividing the country into twelve bishoprics led by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman (left), created Archbishop of Westminster. "Pio Nino" fully expects three million Britons will return to the mother Church.

Wiseman proclaims the good news in a pastoral letter entitled "Out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome." He declares "the restoration of Roman Catholic England to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament." Wiseman so over-stated his new powers that the Queen supposedly asked "Am I Queen of England or am I not?"

Needless to say, Protestant feelings were aroused. The Whig Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, led a rabid "No Popery" campaign, labeling English Catholics "enemies within the gate, indulging in their mummeries of superstition." It was "Papal aggression" rumbled The Times, "We can only regard it as one of the grossest acts of folly and impertinence which the Court of Rome has ventured to commit since the Crown and the people of England threw off its yoke."

Lord Shaftesbury, attacking the "monstrous audacity" of Rome, and headed a newly formed Protestant Defence Committee. Russell rushed through Parliament a hastily drawn Ecclesiastical Titles Act, which declared all religious titles outside the Church of England, illegal. Mr. Gladstone, no Romish sympathizer to be sure, argued vainly against the bill. "Do you think so ill of the capacity of your religion to bear the brunt of free competition, as to say you will now attempt to fence it about with legal enactments, instead of trusting to its own spiritual strength ... If the truth is on your side, God will give you the victory."

The bill, despite its attendant rhetoric, proved toothless and in 1871, Gladstone, then Prime Minister, saw its repeal.

September 28, 1858 --- A Marriage in High Life

In the British Garrison Chapel at Gibraltar, the 7th Earl of Cardigan, who had led the gallant "Charge of the Light Brigade," marries his mistress, the beautiful Adeline Horsey de Horsey.

No stranger to scandal, the 60-year old Cardigan's relationship with the 34-year old Miss Horsey, daughter of an Admiral, was "peculiarly shameless." He installed her in a Mayfair flat where he visited her regularly. They rode together in Hyde Park almost daily. When Cardigan's long estranged wife died after a long illness that July, he raced to Adeline's side. In her delicious but unreliable memoirs, Adeline recalls Cardigan's frenzied cries, "My dearest, she's dead ... Let's get married at once!" Atypically, she insisted upon a suitable interval following the first Lady Cardigan's funeral.

It is not surprising that the marriage scandalises respectable society. The Governor of Gibraltar was challenged to a duel by the Earl; the governor had invited Cardigan to dine but pointedly made no reference to his new bride. The Governor ordered the honeymooners to leave the rock. The Earl and Countess, aboard his private yacht, sailed for Italy where they received a friendlier welcome from and even a private audience with the Pope.

Home in England, Cardigan rejected any invitation, including Royal summonses, that did not include his wife. The marriage survived society's prudery. Other than the disappointment of failing to produce an heir, m'Lord and Lady appeared quite happy, save for the odd domestic disagreement.  The servants spoke of much crockery tossing about the Cardigan estate at Deene.

After Cardigan's death in 1868, Adeline married a Polish nobleman, the Comte de Lancastre. Although they soon separated, Adeline kept the title of Comtesse de Lancastre which angered Queen Victoria who traveled for security and privacy reasons as the Countess of Lancaster. Before her re-marriage, Adeline had wooed the widowed Disraeli, who rejected her. In her aforementioned memoirs, My Recollections, however, Adeline reversed the story.  She claims that, on advice from the Prince of Wales, she spurned Disraeli's advances.  And just as well, as she added gratuitously that the aging statesman had very bad breath.

September 27, 1864 --- The Greatest Loser

Banting is alive. At the height of his eponymous diet mania, William Banting denies that he is seriously ill or, worse, dead.

A diminutive London undertaker in his mid-sixties, Banting had lost some fifty pounds (he had weighed over 200) by eliminating all sugar and carbohydrates (butter, milk, potatoes, beer, etc.) and eating only meat, fish and dry toast. For the first time in years he could tie his shoes and no longer "puffed and blowed in a way that was very unseemly and disagreeable."

Banting claimed anyone willing to follow his lead could expect a weight loss of as much as 8 pounds in 48 hours. His published pamphlet, A Letter on Corpulence, had gone into several editions and the expression "I'm banting," came to mean "I'm dieting" and the verb "to bant" entered (and remains in) the Oxford English Dictionary.

But the diet had come under fire from the medical community and rumors about his health are rife. In a letter printed in today's Times, Banting declares: "Many reports have been circulated most painful and distressing
to me ... of my illness from adopting the system, and of my death in consequence; but all such reports are utterly false." He suggests that his many medical critics harbor "mercenary" motives. Admitting "I do not possess a grain of knowledge of the physiological reasons for the extraordinary results of the system," he challenges the scientific community to do more research, and less complaining, "to work out the problem hitherto rather slighted and overlooked."

As would be expected, Punch had much fun at Mr. Banting's expense.

Some glutton has stated that brave Mr. Banting
Himself has succumbed to the system he taught.
'Tis false, and he lives, neither puffing nor panting,
But down to a hundred and fifty pounds brought.

Banting survived another fourteen years. He passed away in 1878 at the age of 82.

September 26, 1886 --- A Broadway Scandal

Respectable New York is shocked at the arrival of the young Earl of Lonsdale and his mistress, the actress Violet Cameron.

The Earl is traveling with Miss Cameron's theatrical company in the very thinly disguised role as the financial advisor to a touring production of "The Commodore." He banters dockside with the Press, gayly dismissing questions about his relationship with Miss Cameron, who is described admiringly as "encased in dark blue serge of faultless fit." As to Lady Lonsdale's whereabouts, the Earl is less forthcoming.

To thicken the plot, "Miss" Cameron's husband, M. DeBensaude, arrives the same day aboard another ship. He and Lonsdale had brawled at a Newcastle hotel and now he'd come to America vowing to cut his wife's throat. The Hoffman Hotel, understandly fearing a scene, asked Miss Cameron to leave after one night. When DeBensaude was seen sharing breakfast with Lonsdale at Delmonico's, the sceptics soon smelled a publicity stunt but The New York Herald reported, DeBensaude used the occasion to challenge Lonsdale to a duel.

De Bensaude soon found himself in the infamous Tombs jail for making public threats. Despite the raffish amusement this provided some, the Press became increasingly censorious, e.g. The New York Star: "We have no patience with a theatrical combination of a noble patron, a wayward wife and a complaisant husband that has recently landed on our shores."

At last, amidst all this tabloid scandal, Miss Cameron trod the boards. The critics were almost gleeful in their disapproval. The New York Times, while conceding that the actress had a "pleasing presence," chortled that the play was such a failure that "twenty minutes before it ended, the audience commenced departing in platoons." The play's run was cut short and a possible tour abandoned. The New York Times condemned the whole venture: "Trying to make a widely advertised suspicion of private immorality take the place of professional competency, the failure of this imprudent attempt is wholesome and exemplary."

Back in London, the Earl and Miss Cameron lived as "Mr. and Mrs. Thompson" in Hampstead. They were soon expecting. Queen Victoria finally intervened on behalf of the abandoned Countess Lonsdale. The Earl was prevailed upon to leave Miss Cameron, in fact, he left for the North Pole. For a time, he was lost and feared dead but returned something of a hero. He also returned to his wife.

The photograph from the National Portrait Gallery