The Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Crystal Palace

The Great Exhibition and contemporary newspaper reports

The amount of literature about the The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations is vast.  Paxton’s design of the building attracted as much attention as the Exhibition itself. This blog offers a brief glimpse of newspaper reports published during the run-up to the exhibition, to its opening and description of its contents, as contained within the British Newspaper Archive (BNA). The Illustrated London News led the way, with detailed descriptions of the plans for and the construction of the Crystal Palace in the second half of 1850, and early in 1851. The magazine Punch also provided many cartoons satirising the whole show, and particularly the leading role of Prince Albert. 

Articles in contemporary London and Provincial newspapers are innumerable. A search for ‘Crystal Palace’ in the BNA, filtering on the years 1850-1859 yields nearly 9,000 pages of results. For the year 1851 alone, the number of pages is 1,423. Placing ‘on’ the filter for illustrations, one retrieves ten pages of results. Many newspapers created special supplements, giving copious details of the forthcoming exhibits, and of the building itself. As early as February 1851, the Reading Mercury sacrificed half of its normal front page of Advertisements, so that the ‘View of the Exterior [i.e. Interior] of the Great Exhibition’ could be reproduced.  

Reading Mercury - Saturday 08 February 1851 page 1

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000369/18510208/001/0001

 

The same illustration of the Interior was reproduced in the Gloucester Journal of Saturday, 22 February 1851, on page 5. The scene is entirely imaginary: the Exhibition did not open until 1^st May 1851. However, we see the throng of people on the ground floor, and galleries are also well populated. The great length of the building is conveyed by the semi-circular window in the distance, to the west. The nature of the roof glazing is conveyed to the viewer, together with the cast iron columns and cross supports, all of which were bolted together. 

Gloucester Journal - Saturday 22 February 1851 page 5

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000532/18510222/019/0005

  

The same illustration was reproduced over a month later by the Sussex Advertiser, 11 March 1851. 

Sussex Advertiser - Tuesday 11 March 1851 page 2

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000257/18510311/002/0002

 

Provincial newspapers were quick to write accounts of the opening of the Exhibition of the 1 May 1851. On page 4 of the Chelmsford Chronicle of the 2 May 1851, we see the Royal Procession; on page 2 of the same issue, a headline: “The Great Exhibition” was supplemented with the by-line: “State Opening by Her Majesty”. The language of the article seems somewhat self important to us today.

Chelmsford Chronicle - Friday 02 May 1851 page 4

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000225/18510502/010/0004

 

Chelmsford Chronicle - Friday 02 May 1851 page 2

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000225/18510502/010/0004

Only a day later, on the 3 May, the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette published the same illustration as appeared in the Chelmsford Chronicle the day before, with the caption: ‘The Royal Procession in the Crystal Palace’. 

Exeter and Plymouth Gazette - Saturday 03 May 1851 page 4

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000267/18510503/009/0004

 

The order of the Royal Procession, printed in detail, shows how carefully regulated it was (this is still true today for Royal ceremonies). Paxton, Henderson and Fox led the way, followed by the Exhibition Commissioners, and then Queen Victoria’s ministers, and the Bishop of London, and the Archbishop of Canterbury. 

Exeter and Plymouth Gazette - Saturday 03 May 1851 page 4

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000267/18510503/009/0004

On the 3 May, in its Supplement, the Bristol Mirror and Times, printed a view of the exterior of the Crystal Palace. We can see much activity outside the façade of the building, carriages arriving with their royal occupants, and conveying other dignitaries. As the building was adjacent to Rotten Row, we see soldiers on horses and many people who had assembled to watch the proceedings .

Bristol Times and Mirror - Saturday 03 May 1851 page 9

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000981/18510503/085/0009

 

Descriptions of the exhibits were many and varied. On the 17 May, the Bristol Times printed a whole page on the Great Exhibition, and Showed an Equestrian statue of the Queen. There was a description of this statue further down the same page.

Bristol Times and Mirror - Saturday 17 May 1851 page 3

Image © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000981/18510517/023/0003

You can obtain other images about the Great Exhibition from many sources. One of the most sumptuous of contemporary publications was Dickinson's ComprehensivePictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851. This was a series of brillinatly coloured chromolithographs. From these, you have a sense of almost being there with the visitors, exploring the many displays of the Crystal Palace, seeing the array of colours and strange objects, both inside and outside the building.

Finally, on October 11th, almost too soon,  it was over. Over six million (6,039,195) people had visited the Exhibition.  £75,557/15- had been spent on refreshments. The quantities of food consumed was prodigious: 60,698 cottage loaves; 68,428 pound cakes; 934,691 bath buns; 1,046 gallons of pickles; 33 tons of hams; 33,432 quarts of milk; 1,092,337 bottles of Schweppes soda water, lemonade and ginger beer. Receipts for the Exhibition amounted to £506,100. Expenditure was £292,794. The difference was £213,305. For an enterprise not intended to make money, it proved very successful at doing so. (This account is drawn from the First Report of the Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851.) A very detailed account of what was done with the surplus funds is printed in the  Survey of London: Volume 38, South Kensington Museums Area. 1975. Chapter 4. The Estate of theCommissioners for the Exhibition of 1851.

The Crystal Palace had to be taken down after the Great Exhibition ended. What happened next is equally well known, and the events that led to the building of the Sydenham Crystal Palace in 1854, and the newspaper reports that covered its genesis, will be described in another blog,

Edmund M B King

January 2015

A year of British Newspaper Archive (BNA) Tweets made by Ed King

I set out with a simple aim: to make a Twitter entry for one article each day from the British Newspaper Archive, and to do this for a year.  I managed to create 349 tweets, between 30 November  2012 and 18 December 2013. (Remember, the links on Twitter will take you directly to view  the page and article, if you have already subscribed to the BNA. If you have not yet subscribed, then you will need to do so, to view the article of your choice.) 


Please forgive any Tweets of a personal nature, not connected to the BNA.  349 tweets is not quite one Tweet a day, but nearly.

Hopefully, you can see all my my Tweets made in 2012-2013 at my Twitter account:

 https://twitter.com/embk11

Newspapers contain details of all subjects – that’s the easy part. More challenging was to select an article for each day, which might resonate with the Twitter audience.  The subjects frequently selected themselves.  For example:

 

·         Names mentioned in any recent television or radio programme;

·       - natural phenomena (storms, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions) ;

·         famous people;

·         authors;

·          collectors (e.g. Sir Hans Sloane)

·         Criminal acts or accounts of trials and court sentences

·         names or subjects or events  in books that I was reading;

·         events that happened ‘on this day’, but many years ago;

·          popular entertainment;

·         maps;

·       war reports;

·         royalty;

·       shipping;

·     illustrations of buildings;

·    engineering achievements - especially ships and the railways

    Advertisements (these were the lifeblood of many newspapers, and there are millions of them, so selecting some of these was fun. )

Here are some articles that I found memorable:

·         Atlantic cable laying of the 1860s.

·         A review of Trollope’s great novel, the Prime Minister ; plenty of resonances today!

·         A Prussian siege battery before Paris.

·         The dash for the South Pole – map and reports

·         Boulton and Watt new fire engine, 1779.

·         Liptons’ teas are the best

·         Pony rides on Weston Sands.

·         Aldeburgh election poem 

·         Bowling the cheese on Cooper’s Hill

·         England vs. Australia: 1^st Test Match – collapse by England

·         Ballet in elk skins; Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring

·         New dining saloon of The Flying Scotsman

·         Mr. (John) Harrison’s timekeeper (longitude)

·         Funeral of Florence Nightingale

·         Burgess’ essence of anchovies (and many more on the same page)

·         Funeral procession of the Duke of Wellington

The whole list of Tweets, is at my Twitter account at: https://twitter.com/embk11

Have fun searching for what you want. (Remember, the links will take you directly to view  the page and article if you have already subscribed to the BNA. If you have not yet subscribed, then you will need to do so, to view the article of your choice.) 

So, what has it been like to tweet an article from the BNA for a whole year?

It was a great voyage of exploration. The glory of being able create simple searches which then trawls vast tracts of texts, for the user to receive answers in seconds was, and remains, awe inspiring. It is truly impossible to do the range of these searches (and subsequent Tweets) by conducting  a manual reading of each newspaper. It was also great to be able to limit the search quickly by filtering to just one newspaper; or to delimit the search by time rapidly with the date filters. It will be indispensable for any serious research to look at all of the search results for famous persons – be they monarchs, businessmen, authors, Bishops, military figures, aristocrats, farmers, actors, singers, and many tens of thousands more. Nor should the pictorial elements of newspapers be ignored. Many had engravings from the 1830s onwards, and from the 1860s, newspapers such as the Graphic or the Illustrated Police News has large numbers of illustrations in every issue. The reproduction of photographs in newspapers from the late 1880s vastly increased the images, to the point today where we live in a visually dominated media.
For me, both the voyage of exploration and the results have been equally gratifying.

Edmund King
June 2014

Poetry in newspapers (8)

From: Newcastle Courant Saturday 17 June 1749 page 2, col.3.

The Rake. A poem.

"Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem tester diu"
Hor. Ep. II. l. 62.

How wild is Youth! How wicked and prophane,
Where savage nature only governs man?
And unreform'd by Education steers
The two-legged Monster in his greener Years!
How base to others? To himself unjust;
Mad in his Cups, and daring in his Lust:
Bold, stubbon, haughty, insolent and pert,
Slighting to Age and scoffing to Desert:
Sage in Opinion, handsome in Conceit,
Rash in his Judgement, foolish in his Wit,
Void of all Care, and destitute of Grace,
Vain in his Air, fantastick in his Dress
In talk contentious, when provok'd, a Bear,
Fickle in Love, a Tyrant to the Fair:
Hot in pursuit of all his Desires,
Makes vig'rous Onsets tho' he quickly tires;
Esteems no merit, but the Worth that dwells
Within some Fencer's Hands, or Dancer's Heels:
In night Adventures does his Courage shew,
And sticks at nothing that a Rake can do.
Thus headstrong Man that rakes away his Youth,
Undisciplin'd in Virtue and in Truth;
Tho' Age reforms him, yet he still retains
Some Tincture of his Lusts within his veins.

[Signed:] AMICUS

Poetry in 19th century newspapers (7)

From the Morning Chronicle of Thursday 23 September 1841, the ballad below about adulterated flour  is printed at the end of the article entitled: "The adulterated flour in Staffordshire".

"Prepared at the Union Mill
With a engine of great power,
And handy quite as any pill,
'Tis ready to be mix'd with flour.
Such miracles by it are wrought,
That by its power alone
Mankind may very soon be taught
To make their bread of stone.

CHORUS
"O there's a way found out at last,
To thin the people faster,
All other schemes are surpassed,
By Copeland's Magic Plaster.

"Likewise by one James Bea-d-ore, who
The truth to tell more plain,
Was once a flour dealer too
Residing in Stoke Lane;
But not content with selling flour,
And wishing to thrive faster,
He dabble in the magic power,
And mix'd it up with plaster.

CHORUS - O there's a way, &c.

"But in defence it is set up -
It's like a lawyer's rigs -
The plaster was intended but
to fatten up the pigs;
But people are so apt to guess,
And many guess quite shrewd,
The pigs that were to eat the mess
Are the swinish multitude.

CHORUS - O there's a way, &c.

Poetry in 19th Century Newspapers (6)

Robert Browning. Evelyn Hope

Published in The Bristol Mercury Saturday, January 12, 1856; Issue 3434.

Verse 1

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead-

Sit and watch by her side an hour.

That is her book-shelf, this her bed;

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,

Beginning to die too, in the glass.

Little has been changes, I think-

The shutters are shut, no light many pass

Save two long rays through the hinge’s chink.

Verse 7

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while;

My heart seemed full as it could hold;

There was a place and to spare for the frank young smile

And the red young mouth and the hair’s young gold.

So, hush I will give you this leaf to keep;

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand.

There that is our secret! go to sleep;

You will wake, and remember, and understand.

[ends]

Poetry in 19th century newspapers (5)

Brighton Patriot and Lewes Free Press etc (Brighton, England), Tuesday, April 7, 1835; Issue 7.

REMONSTRANCE
Addressed to a young Lady at Lewes, for wearing Tory colours on the 9th March, 1835.

The Sullen purple's used to hide
The gloomy tyrants savage pride;
A veil to cover Royal Shame,
And deck full many a hated name.
O pluck the servile badge away,
'Tis neither lovely, glad, nor gay.

Leave stern rough man to war and strife;
Woman, the softening diadem of life,
Why should she seek to show a zeal
That man, and only man, can feel.
Love love the calm; away he flies
When Discord's ugly storma arise.

But if the wish inspires thy heart
In politics to take a part,
Chose virtue's* side, - nor e'er be found
On tryanny's+ accursed ground.
Side not with those who made thee slave,
But those who generous freedom gave.

O pluck that servile badge away,
'Tis neither innocent nor gay;
Britannia treads it in the dust,
With hate as deep as it is just.
Then give me leave to deck thy hair
With something worthy to be there.

Nor earth the color can supply
Soft as thine onw mild gentle eye.
The wreath my hand would twine for you
Should be of Heven's unfading blue./
It has endured, and shall endure,
Fit emblem for the brave and pure.

OTHEGREEN.

* Radicals + Tories / Kemp

Middlesbrough Gazette Sat March 3 , 1877