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ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, THE WORLD'S FIRST ILLUSTRATED NEWSPAPER
To ensure continuity of readership Herbert Ingram, founder of the ILN, astutely dangled a free gift before the eyes of the many thousands of people who had been influenced by the prospectus, "To Subscribers who buy The Illustrated London News regularly each week for six months a copy of the splendid Colosseum Print of London will be presented". That Colosseum Print was to be one of Herbert Ingram's most brilliant ideas.
Palmer and Clayton were engaged to print the contents of the ILN at 10 Crane Court, and to publish it at Clayton's newsagent's shop at 320 Strand, on the north side of the church, St. Mary-le-Strand.
THE COLOSSEUM PRINT
Herbert Ingram believed that photography, first announced to the world in 1839, could be of use to his illustrated newspaper and he had in mind the publication of the giant view of London photographed from the top of the Duke of York's column, 124 feet high. Official permission was granted for photographs to be taken from its summit and Antoine Claudet, with his daguerreotype camera, climbed the twisting steps inside the monument. At the dizzy top he set up his apparatus and exposed a sequence of views of London, looking north, and another sequence looking south.
After development, the daguerreotype plates of silvery metal were laid side by side in two rows one above the other to make a lay-out of the picture which was to be printed on paper four feet four inches wide and nearly three feet high, but first an artist, C. F. Sargent, using a pencil, had to draw the photographic detail onto the smooth surface of the biggest wood-block ever made. It was composed of sixty pieces of box-wood joined tightly together "without line, speck or flaw" and then sent to Ebenezer Landell's engraving firm where he and his staff of eighteen assistants worked day and night for two months on the largest engraving ever executed.
While it was being completed, the ILN moved into its own premises at 198 Strand, a big shop at the corner of Milford Lane facing St. Clement Danes Church. The ground floor was used as the publishing office, and on the three floors above four rooms accommodated the editorial and advertisement offices and an engraving studio. Two rooms were lived in by the new publisher, William Little, whose sister Ann was engaged to be married to Herbert Ingram.
By the end of the year, the great Colosseum View of London in 1842 had been engraved, stereotyped and printed by Palmer and Clayton at 10 Crane Court, and this famous picture was supplied in company with the ILN issue of 7 January 1843. The print was a huge success and exciting scenes were witnessed at 198 Strand where crowds of newsmen shouted their demands to be served. At one period the staff were so tired that the premises had to be closed while the men rested.
The Coloseum Print - A Panorama of London looking
North
The Coloseum Print - A Panorama of London looking South
January 7th
price sixpence.
It features articles with prints from engravings including
March 4th
'New Chapel and Training Ground Attaches to The Normal College, Chelsea'
'Fashions'
Lord Abinger'
Sheriffs Procession, Manchester'
Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey - Daniel M' Naughten's Trial, Assassination of Mr Edward Drummond'. Also a detailed article covering the proceedings.
'The Testimonial of Sir Moses Montefiore'
'Mortlake Church'
'Carnival at Rome'
Prince of Hanover's Marriage'
View of Geneva'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also articles (no engravings) including Foreign Intelligence', Imperial Parliament',
Shipping Intelligence', Naval and Military Intelligence', Country News', The
Court and Haut Ton', Epitome of News' , 'The magazines', Assize Intelligence
- The Circuits', Police, Coroners Inquest',
March 25th
' Bethlem Hospital '
' Plan of Bethlem Hospital, Wards and Gardens '
' Review of the 7th Dragoon Guards at Woolwich '
' New Military Miel Academy ' Woolwich
' Artillery Barracks ' Woolwich
' Robert Southey From the Portrait By Sir T. Lawrence '
' The Crowning of Bruce '
' The Comet - Grand Meteoric Phenomenon '
' Fashions '
'Interior of Tattersall's '
' Betting Table '
' Entrance to the Thames Tunnel '
' Anderson as Othello '
' Mr Love The Polyphonist '
' Cowper's Summer House at Olney '
' England And France; or The Sisters. A Romance of Real Life By Henry Cockton ' with some engravings
' Cambridge from The Castle Hill '
' Publishing Office of The Illustrated London News '
' Chess Problem '
Also articles (no engravings unless listed above) including :-
' Personality in Public Affairs ' politics
'Foreign Intelligence' with reference to The Advance of the Buenos Ayreans on Monte Video and more
Police ' includes A Foolish Freak at Buckingham Palace - Queen Square, Outrage at the House of Lords
' Coroners Inquests ' includes The Suicide of Mr Isaac Cohen etc
' Death of the Governor of New Zealand - His Excellency Captain William Hobson at Auckland in his 49th year '
' New Conquest by France in the Pacific - Tahiti '
' Bethlam Hospital - "vulgarly called Bedlam ... owed its name and original establishment to the piety of a citizen of London.....From the first reception of lunatics into bethlem their condition and treatment were wretched in the extreme..... " and much more
'Court and Haut Ton' at Buckingham Palace etc
'Metropolitan News'
'Country News'
'Ireland'
' Dramatic and Musical Chit Chat '
' Robert Southey ' the Poet Laureate dies at Keswick in Cumberland
' Hymn - On the Occasion of the Present Astronomical Visitation '
' Memoirs of A Griffin or A Cadets First Year in India by Captain Bellew ' book review and more
' Assize Intelligence - Midland Circuit - Northern Circuit - Oxford Circuit - Surrey Sessions '
' Commerce and Money '
' Cambridge Election '
June 24th
issue price sixpence.
It features articles with prints from engravings including
July 1st
issue price sixpence.
It features articles with prints from engravings including
July 15th
price sixpence.
It features articles with prints from engravings including
460
price sixpence.
It features articles with prints from engravings including
760
IRELAND AND THE IRISH.
Our attention having been repeatedly drawn of late, by several correspondents,
to the social condition of the sister country, with a view to the pictorial
illustration of its multicoloured phases, we have procured the annexed series
of sketches, which, we are persuaded, will be equally interesting to our English
and Irish readers. Before proceeding to their details, we should observe that
the several sketches, graphic and descriptive, are the result of recent tours
made by the artists and authors.
First, stands impersonated before you in the rags, wretchedness, and recklessness of
IRISH POVERTY!
Do not say "hence," but look her straight in the face, and hear her tale, whilst she tells it in the meek sadness of a breaking heart. The time is come for you, Christian England, to do so, for she is beginning to appeal not so much to your pity as to your peace of mind.
The Irish beggar-woman! Who that has ever seen or heard ever can forget her? Wan, wasted, wobegone, squalid beyond description, she says not unto Jacob, "Give me children, or I die!" And how many of the rich Rachels of womankind would not give half of what they are worth in this world for even one of those dear suffering infants-- one on poor Molly's back, and the other at her breast-- her first and tenderest care, who are, as she tells you, "crying with the hunger, and coaxing their guardian angel to soften your heart." Look at Molly's firstborn. He seems half sad, and yet "he's a droll boy, every inch of him." He, poor fellow, is addicted to a remarkably spare style of regimen. Give him a potato, and if he is not happy, he is at least content. He once had the audacity to suggest to his mother that a grain of salt would be, in his opinion, a great improvement to the national esculent, "if he could only get it." "Cock you up with dainties, you young vagabond; is it after earning the gallows for yourself you'd be?-- the next you'll be after wanting is a glass of whisky to wash it down!" Padyheen (little Paddy) bears this and every other species of rap and repartee with philosophy. Throw a copper coin down there on the road side, and he'll go through an Irish jig or a hornpipe that would make Perot bite his lip; or twitch the delicate nerves of Taglioni, and beat the Polonaise, the Pas de Basque, the Pirouette, or the Bolero, for it is a wild essence of them all confounded together. Padyheen's is literally the power, if it be not the poetry, of motion. He does not require your music or your foreign airs. He is his own piper-- a sifleur of surpassing sweetness, with a wild curl in his little whistle as he gives you one of his wildest airs that you may in vain try to equal, although you have in your day and in any part of England whistled at the cart's tail or in the shafts of a plough. Dancing through his destiny, therefore, not wrestling with his lot, till the "prima lanugo," first down of manhood appears upon his chin; take care he don't then dance to another tune and make somebody pay the piper. Rock or Spartacus, a midnight legislator, or a rebellious slave in the open day-- look to him in time, especially you Irish landlords, whose very existence now depends on his moral and social amelioration. His condition, as the Premier of England has said, is "a question of morals, not of laws;" and a late Under-Secretary for Ireland said not long ago that "property has its duties as well as its rights." Do you deny the truth of the appeal, and dare you still call on English power and the majesty of the laws to keep up your system? Where is the husband of that wretched, houseless wanderer from door to door-- the father of those "young barbarians"-- where is he? He is in England, reaping and mowing to earn you seven times the value of his little patch of ground that he may keep the hovel of a homestead which is upon it over his family during the hard winter. This must be given up, if whilst away his wife and children cannot get enough to support life, and should present themselves at the gates of the union workhouse. Not a penny of outdoor relief! And, if they give up their little all, what a fate awaits them within those places of sighs and tears! Two scanty meals of potatoes; milk at one of them, and not a spoonful of broth (meat would set the wretches mad, according to the Poor-law Commissioners) from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. Twopence in the shilling to the poor, and tenpence to the officers-- there's the Irish Poor-law for you in one short sentence; and that's a grievance that needs no ghost from the grave to discover, no demagogue to dwell upon its enormity. No wonder, then, that, whilst the poor husband is away in England, the wife puts the padlock on the cabin-door, and presents, with her poor little ones, the melancholy picture before you:--
"Some natural tears they drop, but wipe them soon;
The world is all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Erin take their solitary way."
Those peasant girls, and the Connemara cabin are features in the same picture of Irish poverty. The latter is on the same scale of comfort as the hut of the Esquimaux, or the wigwam of the North American Indian. To have a regularly-built chimney instead of a hole in the roof, would be to let all the smoke out, which is not the object of the inmates; or, in other words, it would not suit their purpose. They require a portion of it, at least to warm the cabin, to keep out the cold air from the chinks in the mud walls, and to season their flitch of bacon. In that familiar-looking porker, which seems "hail fellow, well met!" with the little boy who is driving him in out of the cold, behold the "spem gregis," the real hope of the family: the bonneen (pig) is the Irish peasant's mainstay. He goes far, if not the whole way, to pay the rent. When we mentioned a flitch of bacon, let not the English reader imagine that the miserable occupants of the cabin "live up" to such luxury. The most they do is to hang it in the chimney, and let it drip on their potatoes, each poor creature in turn pointing a potato to receive the dropping grease. This meal is called "potatoes and point." Poor Power! how admirably he used to give that droll scene in "The White Horse of the Peppers," where Gerald Pepper describes this charte à manger to the Dutchman, who wondered how a whole family could feed for so long a time on a small herring. "You may rub your pratye on the skin of the fish," said he, "if you wish to make a baste of yourself!"
The blue-eyed, fair-haired, laughing girls, whom you perceive, one a drawer of water like Rebecca, and the other returning home from market like any female character that suits your recollections, from the works of any of the great masters, except those of the Flemish school-- for Sheela Maguire is spiritually contradistinguished to gross nature-- are both of them "parties" (as the attorneys say) of no mean consequence in their own and in their sweethearts' estimation. Fine fellows these sweethearts are too, and their intentions are honourable and pure, as ever were offered up at the shrine of beauty. Nora may return home across the fields from the fountain, Sheela along the road with the produce of her eggs and butter, at any hour of the night they like. The one need not be afraid of having her pitcher broken, or the other of having her basket crushed by anything like an attempt at felonious gallantry.
"Lady, dost thou not fear to stray
So late and so lone by the bleak way?
Are Erin's sons so dead or so cold,
As not to be tempted by woman or gold?
Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm,
No son of Erin shall offer me harm;
For tho' they love woman and golden store,
Sir Knight, they love honour and virtue more."
The contrary has turned out, of course, now and then of--
"Blessed for ever was she who relied
On Erin's honour and Erin's pride."
That Connaught man, with the bonnet-like caubeen, the short pipe, curly whiskers, and over-hanging brow, is a dangerous-looking Lothario to trust in your meadows or corn-fields after dark, and looks very like a gay deceiver.
The cottage, in the doorway of which an old woman is spinning, and around which are pigs, poultry, and goats, or cabin it still must be called, when we recollect the general cleanliness and comfort of the cottage homes of England, may supposed to be in one of the best districts of Leinster, the metropolitan province of Ireland. It is of the same structure and economy now as the cabins were upwards of thirty years ago when Mr. Wakefield visited Ireland. In his work, one of the most comprehensive and impartial ever written on the state of the sister country, he describes the roofs of the cabins in Westmeath without ceiling, supported by two or three props. "The walls," he adds, "were constructed of mud or stones, and sometimes of a mixture of both. The roof is formed by two or three couples, over which are laid, in a cross direction, the boughs of trees not stripped of their leaves. These are covered with turf, which is protected by the effects of the weather by a thatching of straw. A hole in the roof gives venting to the smoke, and the bare ground is the floor and the hearth. A hay-band so neatly twisted as to be almost equal to a tow-rope, is stretched across the cabin, nearly over the fire-place, for hanging the linen to dry; but as the place is generally involved in thick smoke, it may be readily conceived that it will acquire little improvement in colour. A cat and two or three dogs are commonly lying round the fire. An iron pot, two or three stools of the rudest workmanship, a bad deal table, a dresser with a few plates and dairy vessels, are all the utensils and furniture of the family."
Thompson, in his "Survey of Meath," remarks that the clay for the walls and roof is taken from the spot on which the cottage is raised, leaving the surface of the floor and the ground immediately about the walls the lowest part, and of course subject to receive all the surrounding damp; "so much so," he says, "that I have often gone into a cabin and seen a hole dug in the floor to receive the water coming in at the door or under the foundation, from whence it might be baled with greater ease when collected. On this damp floor the family most commonly sleep, generally without a bedstead, none of them having a loft except in town cabins, where the ground for building on is more valuable."
The goat is found to be of profit to the poor cabin-keeper in some districts of Ireland, especially in the north. Sir Charles Coote, in his "Survey of Armagh," states that the milk of the goat, whose food is never taken into account, is equal to one-fourth of a cow's, and that it is richer and exceedingly wholesome. Mr. Tighe, in his "Survey of Kilkenny," states that these animals are kept by many small farmers, but not in flocks, and that a few were to be found among the dairies in the Welsh mountains (a district in that county); and he adds that "the milk of six goats is said to be equal in quantity to that of one cow." Mr. Sampson, in his "Survey of Derry," ways with respect to that county, that "there are no herds of goats in the mountains, but they are found individually among the habitations of the lowland poor. You frequently see the milch-goat tied by the head while she browses on the quickset of a neighbour; her owner has no hedge-- no land! He has a friend, however, for his little ones when he has the shegoat. The milk is divided for five weeks with the kid; the kid is sold as venison, and the goat remains the best succour under Heaven. Where there are many the custom is to fold them at night and keep off the kids, then milk them in the morning, and admit the natural client for the rest of the day. In high pastures much must be made of their milk, and their browsing costs nothing."
The cottage of the better class of Irish peasants is to be seen here and there through the provinces of Munster and Leinster; very rarely, indeed, in Connaught, but chiefly in the north of Ireland. Do not let us be carried away by the usually accepted notion that the more comfortable appearance of the peasantry in the northern province is owing to difference of religion, it being called Protestant Ulster. The reason is, simply, because they have better landlords. The Irish society, for instance (certain guilds of the London corporation), to whom James I. gave the territories of the O'Neals, O'Donnells, and other attained northern chieftains for the propagation of protestantism, have ever been justly considered the best landlords of Ireland. Independently of this consideration, the greater part of the lower orders certainly are of the old faith of their country. Fifty years ago there was not a Catholic inhabitant within the walls of Londonderry, called the maiden city, from the gallant and triumphant defence which Governor Walker and the "'Prentice Boys" made against James II.'s besieging force. The majority of the inhabitants are now Roman Catholics, including, all those who live in the streets built beyond the walls and ramparts in later years. The small farmer or better class Irish peasant in the better districts-- such as the north, to which we have thus made especial allusion, or elsewhere, in Meath, Westmeath, Kildare, Kilkenny, some parts of Limerick, Cork, &c.-- is a shrewd, hard-working, sober, honest being; high spirited, hospitable, and happily and peaceably inclined, so long as he considers himself treated. If you treat him with particular kindness you may command his life. From the class of small farmers not a few of the Catholic clergy of Ireland have sprung; and their constant and kind intercourse with it, independently of the old feeling of veneration which attaches to them, is the main reason of their popularity and the main spring of their power. O! ye wretched absentees-- you clearers of the soil by whole families and tribes-- ye moral exterminators-- for the time is come for all parties in England to call you by your proper name-- if you knew the affections you trample on and destroy, the rich worth you throw away to add a hundred or two to your incomes; or to purchase an artificial importance, you would alter your plan, and try the soothing system. You-- and remember that property has its duties as well as its rights-- you are now finding out that it has its real interests also. You would imitate the "live and let live" system which is acted up to between the English landlord and tenant. You would go amongst those by the sweat of whose brow you live. You would administer to their wants, and contribute to their happiness. You would learn the pleasure of doing good. You may even learn a wholesome moral lesson by going amongst the poor sometimes; they have rugged virtues which you might imitate sometimes with advantage. In their simple and touching stories your hearts may be softened, and your better nature drawn out:--
"Let not ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor."
GROUP OF CHILDREN.
The group of children claims particular attention. The description we have given of Padyheen, the beggarwoman's son, may do for the boys, and yet we cannot chuse but look for an instant at the chief figure in the foreground. Nothing can be more spirited-- "rollicking" the Irish call it-- more free from embarrassment, or more graceful. He stands and looks every inch of him a little man. His shirt, which in its best days was of a rough description, has grown rather fine-drawn by the wear and tear of experience. Its collar is flung dashingly open, as if to say, "there's a neck for you, my darlings." No white cravat, prim and starched, á la jeune Angletere, stiffens that neck; no tie á la Byron-- the disgusting appendage, in general, of our English hobbledehoys-- trains it prematurely to effeminate tenderness. His nether habiliment, like those of Rip Van Winkle's boy is, in all probability, cut out of a pair of his father's cast-off galligaskins. Full of holes are the young rapparee's indispensables, not for any purpose whatever, not even for ventilation, as some town bloods bore the roofs of their night hats to let out the ascending fumes of their wine; and rent to the very verge of decorum; "torn and flying," like "Freedom's banner," described by Byron; but the young patriot does not "nail his colours to the mast," as Scott describes Pitt to have done; for he has lost his gallowses in his last scrimmage by the river's marge, or the edge of a bog-hole; and his right hand is obliged to pay obeisance to the conventionalities of society. The wit of the Irish peasant urchin is proverbial, and his talent for waggery and mischief is one of the "gamin de Paris" kind, and something more. He is of merry blood, and was born a farceur. "I'll be up to that thief of a magpie," said a young rogue of this description, on finding out that the "gazza ladra" of his father's garden had taken away some of his marbles and certain of his little sister's playthings. He watched his opportunity, and when the bird next left her nest on which she had been hatching, he climbed up the tree and took her eggs away. These he very quickly boiled, and climbing up again, replaced them in the nest. As magpies, although clever birds in their way, and up to a thing or two, do not carry three-minute time glasses about them, nor patronize egg saucepans, the one in question was totally unconscious, on her return, of the fatal blow which had been given to her philogenitive expectations. "They'll be fine birds when they're hatched," the little chuckler used to say, for many a day, as he watched the poor unconscious bird patiently endeavouring to bring about which was not to be. There is an anecdote told somewhere of Voltaire that, when very young, he wrote the following epigram on a statue of Idleness, a little boy with a piece of bread to his mouth, which stood in the school-room:--
"Tu qui semper edis
Dic mihi quando bibes?"
Which we translate:
Thou that art always eating, tell
When you'll have something to drink as well?
Padyheen eats and drinks whenever he can, and as well as a hand-to-mouth existence will let him; but if you ask him when he works or goes to school, his answer is "when he can't help it." That is not his fault, however. Change the system you have long observed towards him, and his country and his condition will be changed. If he appears the portrait of idleness at ease, his sister, poor child, with the basket of turf on her back, under which she bends, is the reverse of the picture. She does not get much hard work, however, although she does something to earn her potatoes. Her mother works hard at field work, but she has a greater tenderness for her child than the parents of our manufacturing and mining districts. Little Kathleen is innocent wildness itself-- not innocence run wild. Unwashed as she may be, you may venture to put her sitting in the wash-tub with much more triumphant effect than attended the experiment tried upon Æsop's blackamoor. She may not walk out a little Venus from the soap-suds all whiteness, like Aphrodite herself, rising up from her parent foam of the ocean, for heaven's canopy in all weathers being her covering by day, and by now and then by night too, "for the want of a better;" she will turn out at best, either now or hereafter, but a simple blue-eyed nut-brown maid. Unlike brunettes of cold climates, however, she is literally thin-skinned in her physical as well as her moral nature. The reason why she lives almost exclusively on vegetable diet, and as she will tell you herself, "Not a mighty deal of that same." Nothing gross is there in her habits of body to generate a coarsely cutaneous exterior; no phlegmatic or dyspepsical visitings to stop the free current of blood and digestion. Take a hint from this all you that labour, and are in pain from the plethoric effects of your hypercarnivrous propensities; not you alone who try, not even to propitiate injured nature by healthful bodily exercise, lolling and lounging as you do your short hour of fresh air before dinner, in softly-downed soft-rolling carriages in the park; but all your children, young and old, and of both sexes of the hard-working middle classes, who eat mutton chops for breakfast, cold fowl for your luncheon, fish, flesh, and fowl for your dinner, a slice of ham or two with your tea, and meat again for your supper. This is the true statement of the case, worth all the magnostics of the faculty. Take a hint from little Kathleen.
IDIOT BOY
The wretched mendicant, with her idiot boy, is an object of deep commiseration. Mother and son are looked upon with extreme kindness by the neighbours; and the poor youth to whom this world is a blank is deemed the heir of blessedness in the world to come, which causes a sort of religious feeling to be observed towards him. The poorest wretch to whom his mother appeals in his behalf would be almost afraid, in the sight of Heaven, to refuse to divide a handful of meal or potatoes with him. From morning till night his eternal "pal, la! pal la!" is heard, unless when he stops the cravings of hunger with the offals that are thrown to him by the hand of poverty-stricken charity. Our artist has drawn him from the life, whether the phrenology or the physiognomy of the animal be taken into consideration. The forehead goes suddenly and pointedly back, like that of Thersites, so masterly described in the Iliad by the great father of poetry; and in the blank stare of his vacant countenance may be seen the verification of the distinction made by one of our philosophers between madness and idiocy-- namely, that the former drew right conclusions from wrong premises, whilst the latter drew from to premises-- that is, had no thought at all. http://tinyurl.com/patal
5700
' Chapel to the Memory of the Duke of Orleans at Paris ' front page
The Loss of the Memnon Steamer With the bombay Mail - ' Cape Guadaful on the Coast of Africa '
' Chart Shewing the Course of " The Memnon " and the Scene of Her Destruction ' Red Sea Arabian Se etc
' Portrait of Mister John Bright MP '
' Election of Lord Mayor at Guildhall Yard '
' Election of Lord Mayor - The Hustings in Guildhall '
' Interior of St Stephens Church at Walbrook '
' Banquet Given by the Queen to theGrand Duke Michel of Russia i the Waterloo Gallery at Windsor Castle '
' .." The Hibernia " Steam Ship '
' the Grand Duke Michel of Russia '
' Hop Picking - The French Vintage - The ENglish Harvest Home ' full page print from engravings
' The Fashions - Rue Chaussee d'Antin Paris '
Ireland and the Irish
' An Aged Beggarman '
' Irish Car Drivers '
' Turf Market at Dublin '
' Cottage or Cabin '
' Irish Physiognomy '
' Scene from the new Ballet of " The Peri " at Drury Lane Theatre '
' Scene From the New Play of " Woman " At Covent Garden theatre '
Illustrations for England and France; or The Sisters a Romance of Real Life By Henry Cockton
' Invalid Chairs ' advert small engraving
' Palmer anc Co.'s Patent Candle Lamp ' advert
' Chess Problem '
This second part of the description features items of news articles etc but have no images associated with the subject matter unless listed above. They include :-
Government and the Recess
Foreign Intelligence
Country News includes The Essex Annual Meeting of Rodings Labourers Friend Society - - - Hull and Lamentable Accident to a Revenue Boat, a Mr Joseph G. Holbrook Mate of the Bee - - - Diabolical Mischief in Yorkshire at Birkenshaw Ackroyds Coal Pit - - - Riots in Wales and the Royal Proclamation
Ireland
Scotland - Riots in Ross-Shire and rioting in East Ross - - - Fatal Accident at Stirling Castle by Leaping Over the Wall at Ladys Look -out - - - Witchcraft Charges - - - Melancholy Accident at Stromness, small boat from The Bull ( inn possibly ) of Hoy
Police Column
Disgraceful Riot in St Leonards Church
Extensive Seizure of Spurious Tea and Tobacco by The Excise Authorities at 2 Whitley Court in Brick Lane St Lukes
The Missing India Mail - Total Loss of the Memnon Steamer with the Bombay Mail at Cape Guadafui ( Cape Guardafui ) off the Coast of Africa, Straits of Babel Mandel ( info. Gulf of Aden )
The Court and haut Ton - Royal Comings and Goings
' Accidents and Offences includes Robbery of Bank Notes at Greenwich - - - Burglaries at Brighton - - - Fatal Accident on th River - - - Fall of A House, Two Persons Killed inThe Village of Westfield near Forth Weildham ? - - - Murder And Suicide at Paris by a M. Pamel a erformer at the Opera Comique
Metropolitan News
Funeral of the Late Sir Matthew Wood at Hatherley Gloucestershire
The British and American Royal Mail Steamship Hibernia
Harvest home - poem
Hop Picking - A Pastral Song
Phenomenon of Jupiter Appearing Without Satellites
National Sports
Sporting Intelligence inlcudes Sale of the Earl of Cardigans Hunting Stud - - - Grand Running Match Between the Four Champions of England - Wild and Byrom from Lancashire - Maxwell From Sheffield - Sheppard from Birmingham at Sampsons Cricket Ground Reading - - - Grand Trotting Match at hatcham Park
A New Freak of Rebecca, a horse shot at the stable of Mr Superintendent Davies in The Bunch of Grapes Yard at Merthyr Tydvil probably by persons connected with the Lawless Rebecca - info known as the Rebecca Riots
Suicide of Maria Hood in Cross Street Shadwell Maket from "Oxalic acid bought the same day at a chymists shop in Ratcliffe ..."
Naval and Military Intelligence includes Payment of Pensioners of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea - - - Death of Lieutenant General Beevor RA at Ramsgate - - - Distribution of the Mediterran4ean Fleet at Malta - - - Private of the Scots Greys Underwent a Flogging at the Barracks at Ipswich
Shipping Intelligence - Disastrous Shipwrcks, Five Vessels Lost and Loss of Life
November 11th
Popular Portraits No. XLV
No one who has ever transacted business at the justice-room of the Mansion-house
of the City of London can fail to recognise in the gentleman, Mr. Hobler, who,
for upwards of half a century, discharged the very onerous duties of principal
clerk to the Right Hon. The Lord Mayor, and who lately retired, full of honours,
to enjoy the “optium cum dignitate” of a well merited and handsome
pension.
Mr. Hobler was born of respectable parents, in the year 1764, and is now in his 79th year. His father was a native of the canton of Vaud, in Switzerland and emigrated to this country, and carried on an extensive business as a watchmaker, in the neighbourhood of Soho Square, exporting largely to America and the East Indies.
He was the youngest son of a family of four children, all of whom, excepting the subject of this sketch, are long since dead; he was baptised in the Swiss Protestant Church; and being the first child christened there after its establishment, he had numerous godfathers: all elders of the congregation standing sponsors fr him at the baptismal font. His education was carefully attended to, and included a thorough acquaintance with the dead and continental languages; many of the latter, particularly the French, Spanish, and German, Mr. Hobler speaks with the same use and fluency as he does the English; an accomplishment which has been of the highest use to him in the discharge of his official duties. Connected with these acquirements were a vigor of intellect, a sparkling wit, a suavity of manners, and an amiability of disposition, that very early in life endeared him to his companions and in after years recommended him to many a generous patron.
On leaving school, he was placed in the counting house of Messrs. Blache, the then extensive sugar brokers in Mincing-Lane, but not liking the monotonous routine of a commercial life, he was transferred to the offices of an eminent crown lawyer, to whom he became articled; and where his assidnity procured for him notice of some of the leading members of the corporation, who, previous to the expiration of his article, gave him the appointment of clerk to the sitting alderman at Guildhall. Having filled this situation for several years, Mr. Hobler was, on the promotion of Mr. William Lewis Newman to be city solicitor, removed to the higher and more lucrative post of chief clerk to the chief magistrate; which he continued to fill to the entire satisfaction of the public and of every successor to the civic chair, until within a very few weeks of his retirement; never, during that long period, having been absent three weeks at any one time, either for pleasure, or the benefit of his health.
The duties of this office are far from being of a light or ordinary character. The Lord mayor is usually some trader or merchant, but little acquainted with the laws he has to administer, and must, in most instances, depend entirely upon the advice of his chief clerk, who, in addition to the usual qualifications of a common law practitioner, should have a perfect knowledge of the criminal statutes and of the peculiar privileges and customs of the City. Indeed it is almost impossible to describe accurately the varied information of this most important civic functionary. The Lord Mayor is a little monarch, and considered by the houseless and distressed of every nation as their natural friend and protector; and hence the constant appeals to his benevolence from the sons and daughters of misery, too often stimulated by artful and designing vagabonds, not only demand that his clerk should be well versed in the continental tongues, but that he should be gifted with a nice perception of human character, which few posses, and is only to be obtained by long and close observation. And equally applicable if this last remark to the investigation of crime; for, as is justly remarked by Mr. Hobler, Jun. In his letter to the Town Clerk of London, detailing the duties of his father’s office – “Many an alderman, by a word from him, has been dissuaded from committing for trial the youthful offender not yet hardened in crime, and the thief of necessity has been admonished, and perhaps so relieved as not again to be tempted.”
All these qualifications were untied in Mr. Hobler; and, to his honour it should be known, that over and over again when the funds placed at his disposal by the Lord Mayor and other charitable persons were insufficient to relieve the urgencies of the applicants for charity, his own purse was at their command, and drew forth from many a grateful heart sincere and fervent prayers for his welfare. To foreigners in particular, the worthy gentleman was ever accessible; and his kindness to the unfortunate Spanish; Italian; Polish, and other political refugees will long be remembered by them and has caused many a curious letter of thanks, addressed “A son Excellence le tres Honorable Monsieur le Secretaire Generale du Milord Maire de Londres.” These old gentleman highly prizes.
But whilst in Mr. Hobler the truly wretched and unfortunate ever found a compassionate and sympathising friend, he was a constant terror to the confirmed beggar and hardened criminal; the recognition of his keen and penetrating eye, followed by the notice, "You and I are old friends, I think," being always fatal to their pursuits for at least some time to come.
One illustration of Mr. Hobler's vividness of recollection is very amusing. A daring young thief having been brought up at the Mansion-house on a charge of burglary, the old gentleman eyed him through his glass, and said, "we have see each other before now." "No, we haven't, old boy," was the impudent reply, upon which, quietly turning on his seat, Mr. Hobler said, "I think I've an invite of yours," and opening a drawer took out and read, to the great merriment of his listeners, a card printed in the hand writing of the prisoner in red ink, soliciting the four of his friends' attendance at a public-house in the Borough, to get "gloriously drunk," and which had been taken from his person on a commitment to Bridewell, many years before, as a rogue and vagabond.
In personal appearance, Mr. Hobler is a fine, tall, upright, powdered-headed gentleman of the old school, always neatly though somewhat eccentrically dressed, in a closely buttoned up black coat, drab breeches and gaiters, which seem to be essential to, and form a part of his very existence. In fact, it is pretty well ascertained that he never was seen in trousers; although some of his friends have a vague recollection that in former years he sometimes wore pantaloons, and Hessian boots.
In his habits he is perfectly regular, and, notwithstanding his advanced age, never rode, but always walked to and from his residence in Queen's Row, Pentonville, and the Mansion House, and with such exactness as to time, that his appearance on any part of his journey was a sure indication of the precise hour of the day.
In conversation Mr Hobler is highly intellectual and facetious, and the readiness of his repartee has long installed him par excellence the civic wit. In his family and amongst his personal friends he is greatly esteemed and beloved. It should be mentioned that some time since a portrait of Mr. Hobler was painted by, we believe, a lady artist, residing in Rathbone-place, from which was taken a lithographic drawing, which has had a ready sale. The original painting, since his retirement, has been purchased and handsomely framed at the expense of the Lord Mayor, and now graces the wall of the justice room, immediately behind his lordship's chair.
Of Mr. Hobler's political opinions nothing is known; but we suppose, from the general pliancy of his disposition, they are of the "anythingarian" school. He married at an early age. His family consists of two sons and two daughters, one son being the well-known solicitor, whose professional services in the cases of Courvoisier, the Custom-house frauds, and those of numerous notorious offenders, have raised him considerable eminence as a crown lawyer. The other son is a large settler and wealthy agriculturist in new South Wales; and of his daughters, one is married and living in Canada, and the other is single and resides at home with her father.
We cannot close this sketch without mentioning, that all sorts of applications were made to Mr. Hobler in his official capacity; and we give, as a curious specimen of the march of mind among people, the copy, verbatim et literatim, of a letter, enclosing the half of a £5 Bank of England note, forwarded tot he worthy Chief Clerk in November, last year, for the purchase of a share in some German Lottery.
Nov. 23, 1842
"dearsir idress these said lines to letyou know that iwish to become to
have a share in the Arstron Lotery Nigh vianna order the Eempires dominio ?
bare and thesedone halfabankofingland not and the other to be remited up a meadiatly
without fale and drect acount Who has won the prizes and aperfetacount and be
so goo asend aleter down whenabouts you will send the acount down nomore at
present hervey Morson Tailor East Rentoon in the Parsh of Holnyspring to the
care of William Palister Tailor and draper east rentoon. Send all returns safe
by ail means wifead. The Clark of the Lodmoare London with speade and forwardit."
It is needless to observe, that the half note was returned to the speculative and silly writer, with a hint that he could more usefully apply it to the wants of his family.
Another curious document, which has come into our hands, and is in the handwriting of Mr. Hobler, is a copy of the commitment of two of the first English Quakers in 1661, for not removing their hats on the passing of the Lord mayor to the Guildhall, and is subjoined, as a singular instance of the liberty of those times: -
London Ss.
"These are to require you to receive into your custody the bodies of Walter
Hewling and John Cripps, herewith sent you, who this present day standing in
the way, as I was passing to the Guildhall, with their hats on their heads,
in a bold and irreverent manner, and being asked why they did so, and were required
to take off their hats, they said they would not, and afterwards being brought
to Guildhall, were commanded again to put off their hats, yet they did, in a
contemptuous manner, keep on their hats, which being, by my command, taken off,
they put them on their heads again, before me and the Court of Alderman, - and
for other misdemeanors, and then safely keep till they shall find sufficient
sureties to appear at the next sessions of peace to answer the same, and in
the meantime to be of good behaviour, or otherwise to be discharged by due course
of law, and this shall be your warrant."
"Dated 17th October, 1661. To the Keeper of the Poultry Compter. Richard
Brown, Mayor."
the above article from November 11th reproduced here by kind permission
of Erica Rowyn http://www.hobler.vintagekin.net/tiln.htm
1800
Laying The Foundation stone of the Temperance Monument, Mount Patrick, Cork ' Front page (there is an ink written address to the top border of this page - Mrs Oldham, Thrumpton Hall, Kegworth, Leicester
'Santa Anna And His Aid De Camp, Arista '
'Mr Hughes Before The Grand Jury in The Case, Queen v. D. O'Connell '
'St Peters Church Islington'
'Signing The Bail Bonds, At Judge Burtons Chambers'
'Interior of The Queens Bench Court, Dublin'
'Mr O'Connell's Residence, Merrion Square Dublin' Mr Daniel O'Connell Trial
'Portraits of The Duke and Duchess of Nemours'
'Meet of the Royal Hunt'
'The Nelson Column, Trafalgar Square, Nov 16, 1843' Full page engraving shows the column with scaffolding still around it with stonemasons still working at the foot of it
'Melton Mowbray'
'Hunting 'Going Out' Melton Mowbray hunter
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'Accidents and Offences'
'Court and Haut Ton'
'Original Poetry - Lines to a Weeping Willow!'
'Naval and Military Intelligence - Official Return of the Military Force in Ireland up to Nov 5'
'The Markets'
'The First Fireside, A Social Ballad Written And Composed By J. Augustine Wade' Full page of sheet music and words
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