Earlier this week I gave a micro-lecture at an event to celebrate Dickens’ connections with Parliament, and I reproduce some of it here. Having had an indifferent education up to 12 and then famously being put to work in a boot-blacking factory by his feckless and Micawber-like father, Dickens joined a solicitor’s office at the […]
The 1834 Fire
16 October 1834 in a Word Cloud
This is what happened when I put the whole text of The Day Parliament Burned Down into Wordle! Click to enlarge…
The Table Spencer Perceval Didn’t Die On
Today is the 200th anniversary of the day when the British Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons. He was shot at 5.15pm at point blank range on 11 May 1812, by John Bellingham, a deranged shipping agent driven mad by his attempts to get the government to […]
A Quick Rinse – or – The Story of News Laundering
In The Day Parliament Burned Down, I have attempted to provide as detailed an account of the disaster as possible, using a wide range of official reports, public records, eyewitness correspondence, contemporary diaries, periodicals and newspapers. On their own, each would provide a skewed and confusing picture of what happened, but when set side-by-side, I hope […]
The Timetravelling Beer Drinker
The cost of a pint of beer in 1834 was a ha’penny. That’s right, a ha’penny. Half a penny. In today’s money the cost is even more surprising: a pint cost the equivalent of just 16p. Why is that? Well, there are all sorts of factors to be taken into account apart simply from inflation […]
The 1834 Fire in Glorious Technicolour
I have been collecting contemporary engravings of the 1834 fire at Parliament during my researches. They’re quite hard to come by, but I have three of them. This first one shows the view from the Lambeth bank of the Thames – from left to right: the Painted Chamber, the House of Commons Library, the residence of the […]
