Table of contents for December 2022 in History Revealed

In the years that followed the discovery of gold near the town of Coloma in California, tens of thousands of fortune seekers from all over the world flocked to the area, desperate to get rich quick. But gold fever was not restricted to the US. The second half of the 19th century saw gold rushes in Australia, Canada, Chile and even a mini rush in Scotland! In this month’s Essential Guide, we’ve enlisted the help of Dr Stephen Tuffnell to examine the myths and realities of the gold rush era - from conditions in the goldfields, to the impact that gold mining had on the environment and indigenous populations. Turn to page 27 to get started. Elsewhere, we look at the real history behind The Woman King, the recent historical…

On 5 December 1952, as Londoners rushed around the city after the start of the festive season, fingers of fog began to unfurl between chimneys. But as night rolled in. the fog thickened, and soon a blanket of smog was choking the capital. Londoners stumbled around the streets, unable to see further than a few metres in front of them. When the Sun rose the next day, it failed to blaze away the smog - instead, it grew thicker and thicker, until in some areas people could no longer even make out their feet. For the next four days, it continued to choke the city. Londoners breathing in the fumes started to hack and gag, and cases of pneumonia and bronchitis soared. Hospitals began to fill up, as thousands succumbed…

The year 1888 is largely remembered in the annals of London history for the murders of five women in the Whitechapel area by a man who has become known as Jack the Ripper. Yet in the same year, in London, there were several other unsolved murders of women. One such woman was Frances Maria Wright. In the early afternoon of 16 May 1888, Mrs Wright, 71, who lived at 19 Canonbury Terrace in Islington, was found dead on her inside door mat. A nervous woman who disliked being left alone in her house, she had inexplicably let two men dressed in outfits that suggested they were gasfitters or plumbers, and armed with workbags, into her home. She was found minutes later, dead from a combination of shock and an injury,…

1 THE OLDEST ITEM AMONG THE CROWN JEWELS IS THE CORONATION SPOON Even in 1349, the Coronation Spoon was thought to be of “ancient forme”. Probably made either for the first Plantagenet monarch, Henry II (r1154-89), or his successor, Richard the Lionheart (r1189-99), the silver gilt spoon measures 26.7cm in length, likely just a little longer than the spoon you use to serve spuds on a Sunday afternoon. Viewed alongside some of the spectacular items that make up the Crown Jewels, it might easily be overlooked. However, it is of huge ceremonial importance. The bowl of the spoon is divided in half by a ridge. During the coronation, the archbishop of Canterbury dips two fingers into either side of the bowl before anointing the new monarch as supreme governor of…

YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE GOLD RUSH They say that all that glitters isn’t gold. But the tiny pieces of metal that a carpenter named James Marshall spotted glistening in the sun on 24 January 1848 certainly were gold - and their discovery would change the course of American history. Marshall wasn’t searching for precious metal on that winter’s day. He was working on a new sawmill in the small Californian town of Coloma. Yet he instantly knew what he had found. “It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold,” he later reported. It’s little wonder that Marshall’s heart skipped a beat, for the flakes that he spotted in a streambed adjacent to the American River would spark one of the most extraordinary events of the…

Although the majority of prospectors were men, some women did up sticks and relocate to California in search of riches and adventure. In 1849, for instance, 700 women stepped onto the dock at San Francisco’s harbour - out of 40,000 total passengers. Some were determined to work in the goldfields, like Louise Clappe, who wrote: “I have become a mineress; that is, if the having washed a pan of dirt with my own hands, and procured therefrom three dollars and twenty-five cents in gold dust… will entitle me to the name.” However, her first foray into gold panning wasn’t quite what she’d dreamed of: “I wet my feet, tore my dress, spoilt a pair of new gloves, nearly froze my fingers, got an awful headache, took cold and lost a…

YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE GOLD RUSH ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT Gold mining is the work of dismantling the landscape. And it came with colossal costs to the environment. “Nothing but flood and fire is so ruthless as the miner,” wrote one miner from Yukon’s Bonanza Creek in 1898. Mining birthed a host of industries with a voracious appetite for the earth’s natural resources. From city-building and commercial agriculture to logging and hunting, from iron working to steam transportation, gold rush societies deforested their local areas, decimated animal populations, and quite literally turned the earth inside out. But the transition to industrial mining accelerated the pace of that destruction to an unprecedented degree. DIMINISHING RETURNS Ironically, geology determined the environmental toll. Whether via placer mining (in which the rock surrounding the gold…

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère Boredom; resignation; weariness; indifference: the expression on the face of the barmaid waiting to take out drink order could be displaying any and all of these emotions. A snapshot, or so it seems, of late 19th-century Parisian nightlife. But are we seeing the full picture? “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère is important for many reasons, not least because it was the last major painting that Manet created before his death in 1883,” says Dr Karen Serres, curator of paintings at the Courtauld Gallery in London. “Manet had long been considered a controversial artist, but by 1882, the Impressionist movement had become well-known and Manet’s works had become more accepted; this piece was exhibited in the Salon de 1882 the official annual exhibition of the French…

King Alfred was far from successful in his early battles against the Danes. Shortly after succeeding his brother Æthelred as ruler of Wessex in 871, he was forced to make a fragile peace by paying the invaders to leave the kingdom, only to suffer further incursions over the next few years. But by 878 and the battle of Edington, Alfred was sufficiently powerful to be able to force the Danes, led by the future king of East Anglia, Guthrum, into a modest retreat across the border into neighbouring Mercia. In the process, Alfred regained the stronghold of Chippenham, and a subsequent programme of fortress building managed to keep future Danish aggression at bay. These were tactics that would come to influence later Saxon leaders, including his children Edward and Æthelflæd,…

SHORT ANSWER A gravestone or statue wasn’t enough for one grieving widow LONG ANSWER Near Dumfries in the south of Scotland sits the picturesque 700-year-old ruins of Sweetheart Abbey. It is remarkable any of it survives at all given all the border wars between the English and Scots, and the downfall of Catholic religious houses following the Protestant Reformation. It had been founded in 1273 by Dervorguilla of Galloway, in honour of her husband. John Balliol - a noble who ended up having an Oxford college named after him - died in 1268, leaving his widow inconsolable with grief. She continued to have food served at his place at the table (before distributing the meal to the poor) and preserved his heart in an ivory-and-silver casket, which she carried around…

WHERE THERE’S A WHEEL, THERE’S A WAY c1900 Today’s growing advocacy for cycling, be it for leisure or the daily commute, is nothing new. The League of American Wheelmen was founded in 1880 in Newport, Rhode Island, with the aim of promoting the humble bicycle’s many benefits to the public. Early enthusiasts included magnates like John Jacob Astor and John D Rockefeller. However, those who took to the saddle (including riders of the ‘high wheeler’, or penny-farthing, seen here), found themselves navigating uneven roads and the ire of wagon drivers and pedestrians. Seeking to improve riding conditions, more than 100,000 cyclists across the United States lobbied for paved roads. In an era before motorised vehicles, the League proved instrumental in laying the foundations of America’s highway system.…

1930 HOT OFF THE PRESS Precipitated by the breakdown of so-called ‘coffee with milk politics’ a term referring to the stranglehold on national politics wielded by São Paulo’s coffee growers and Minas Gerais’s dairy industry - the Revolution of 1930 augured the collapse of the First Brazilian Republic. Following a contested presidential election and military insurrection, Getúlio Vargas swept to power and deposed Washington Luís as president that November. Newspapers supportive of Luís were banned and many of their offices torched, as seen here where a crowd in Rio de Janeiro look on as firefighters tackle a blaze at O Paiz’s headquarters. 1974 LEAPS AND CROWNS When it comes to rites of passage, few are more daring than land diving – a tradition from which the modern sport of bungee jumping is…

The Hussite Wars WHAT WERE THE HUSSITE WARS? Sometimes known as the Hussite Revolution or the Bohemian Wars, the Hussite Wars lasted roughly 15 years, between 1419 and 1434. They were fought between a coalition of Catholic forces - backed by the pope, the Bohemian king (and later Holy Roman Emperor) Sigismund and numerous Catholicfriendly European states - and a group known as the Hussites, who represented a precursor to the Martin Luther-led Protestant Reformation a century later. The Hussites were devoted followers of Jan Hus, a theologian and religious reformer from Bohemia (a kingdom that broadly covered what is now the Czech Republic), whose memory they set out to protect and whose teachings they sought to promote. WHAT DID JAN HUS BELIEVE IN? A preacher at the Bethlehem Chapel…

YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE HISTORICAL CONSULTANT FOR THIS MONTH’S ESSENTIAL GUIDE DR STEPHEN TUFFNELL is associate professor of modern US history at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford. He is the author of Made in Britain: Nation and Emigration in Nineteenth-Century America, published in 2020 by University of California Press. PODCAST Dr Stephen TuffneII discusses gold rushes across the globe on a recent episode of the HistoryExtra podcast: historyexta.com/gold-rushes-qa…

THE GLOBAL PICTURE YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE GOLD RUSH VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA (1851-69) In 1885, when visiting English journalist George Augustus Sala dubbed it “Marvellous Melbourne”, Vietoria’s capital was enjoying a boom. Here was a growing southern city that was reputedly the world’s richest - at least until a financial crash in 1893 brought an abrupt end to an era of brash boosterism. To understand the swagger of so many Melburnians at this time, it helps to go back to 1850. This was the year when pastoralist, politician and financier William Campbell (1810-96) discovered gold on the station, or landholding, owned by his brotherin-law, Donald Cameron. It wasn’t the first time gold had been discovered in Victoria and the two men didn’t immediately make the find public for fear of…

HISTORY ON SCREEN The assault on Abeokuta was going to fail. The soldiers of Dahomey, a powerful kingdom in west Africa, were trained, disciplined and courageous, so threw themselves across the deep ditches and up the high walls without hesitation - only to be cut down by the gun placements and numerous defenders waiting at the top. The city, capital of Dahomey’s rivals the Egbas, was too big and too well fortified. Much as it had been 13 years earlier at the first attempted siege, defeat was a matter of time on that day in 1864. If this was to be their doom, however, one Dahomey soldier would meet it on their own terms with a gesture of contemptuous defiance. Having sealed the wall, they stopped on the ramparts in…

In December 1869, a treacherous experiment was underway in a small village in Wales. Sarah Jacob, her parents claimed, had survived without a single scrap of food crossing her lips for two years. Now, in the face of scorn from the scientific community, they were attempting to prove that their daughter really was a “miraculous faster”. But six days into the two-week round-the-clock watch, things weren’t going to plan. The nurses, keen eyes primed to detect any attempts at deceit, were growing worried about the 12-year-old. She was getting weaker and colder. In fact, it looked like she was starving to death. Though newspapers across the nation were avidly following the “extraordinary case”, Sarah was not the first so-called “fasting girl” Britain had seen, nor was she the first to…

Seven years into his rule as king of Wessex, during which he suffered frequent Viking incursions, Alfred’s troops met the forces of the Danish leader Guthrum at the battle of Edington. His victory was highly significant, not least because Wessex was the only Saxon kingdom that hadn’t succumbed to Viking control. Furthermore, not only did it mark the beginning of Wessex’s heavy fortification, protecting Alfred’s subjects from future invasions, but it also fostered peaceful relations due to Alfred’s insistence that Guthrum’s Christian baptism be a key clause of the post-battle Treaty of Wedmore. Overall Scandinavian control of each and every Saxon kingdom had been averted.…

MUST SEE EXHIBITION Friends and Relations: Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews Bringing together the private and public collections of works by painters Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and Michael Andrews, this major exhibition charts the friendship and progress of these luminaries of postwar British art. As the greatest collector of his friends’ works, the exhibition distinguishes Freud as the group’s core figure, and showcases the artists as sitters and painters of one another. Portraits of their relatives and lovers, alongside photographs of the quartet over the years by their friend, Bruce Bernard, make for an unmissable retrospective. PAID ENTRY Gagosian, London, 17 November 202228 January 2023, gagosian.com EXHIBITION Transitions in Print Housing one of the greatest collections of 15th-century European printing in the world, this exhibition…

Howard Hughes: the troubled tycoon Every venture the American business magnate undertook was big - from his blockbuster movies to the planes he constructed. But how did Hughes go from rubbing shoulders with the stars to living a life of seclusion? With the death of his father in 1924 and just two years after his mother’s passing, Howard Robard Hughes Jr took over a million-dollar business at barely 18 years old. He was studying engineering and not overly enthused to run a company manufacturing drill bits for the oil industry. But he was keen to make the most of his fortune and freedom. Buying out his relatives’ shares and putting savvy businessman Noah Dietrich in charge of day-to-day dealings, the young Hughes set off to pursue his passions: movies and…

Q: What makes a gold rush different to other periods of ongoing gold mining activity? A: The allure of gold has driven people to mine, refine and smelt it to create artefacts, jewellery and exchangeable objects for centuries. But what makes a gold rush different to other, more general periods of gold mining is really to do with the scale - the speed and pace - of the mining that takes place. The gold rushes of the 19th century stand out for that reason, and they were also notable for triggering huge transfers of population, which in turn resulted in the large-scale transfer of goods, capital, property and ideas. The 19th-century gold rushes were also gold rushes because people thought of and experienced them as such. At the height of…

YOUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE GOLD RUSH GOLD RUSH EMIGRANTS When picturing a “forty-niner", one of the treasure seekers who travelled to California in search of gold and glory, your mind might conjure up a sun-burned white man with a tangled beard and a gold pan dangling from his hand. While almost 80 per cent of prospectors were white east coasters, thousands of newcomers to California also poured in from across the globe. In early 1848, around the same time that the first cries of “gold” rang out in California, there were only around 157,000 people in the region. Of that number, 150,000 were Native Americans, 6,500 were of Spanish or Mexican descent and the rest - only a few hundred - were recent European settlers. As news of the gold…

When James Marshall discovered gold by the American River in early 1848, it sparked an outbreak of gold fever that would last for decades. Thousands of people from all over the globe flocked to the area in the hope of striking it rich, bringing with them a range of mining techniques and experience. The first miners relied on ‘panning’ methods, swirling the river water in a pan so that the heavier metals sank to the bottom while lighter sediments washed to the back, but before long, simple machines like ‘rockers’ were also introduced, capable of processing larger volumes of gravel and water. Although these rudimentary methods remained in use, more intensive techniques would emerge during the 1850s, such as hydraulic mining, which used jets of water to wash gold-bearing deposits…

ONE TO WATCH Desert warriors SAS Rogue Heroes / BBC One & BBC iPlayer, starts Sunday 30 October In the early months of 1941, the British situation in the fight against Germany and Italy was perilous. At the same time as the Luftwaffe pummelled Britain’s cities during the Blitz, the war in North Africa, crucial to protecting supply lines, was going badly. How were troops from Britain and its empire going to turn the situation around? One unconventional young commando officer had a bright idea. David Stirling (1915-90) reasoned that a small group of highly trained soldiers, travelling rapidly using mechanised transport, could cause havoc behind enemy lines by attacking several targets over the course of a single night as they criss-crossed the desert. Thus the Special Air Service (SAS)…

THE RESTORATION Step inside the court of Charles II and explore his 25-year reign as the Merry Monarch - from science and culture, to religious unrest and revenge for his father’s murder PLUS… AN A-Z OF MEDIEVAL CHILDHOOD THE ADVENTURES OF EXPLORER ISABELLA BIRD IN A NUTSHELL: THE SOVIET UNION EIGHT THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT KING GEORGE WHAT IF… NAPOLEON HAD CONQUERED RUSSIA? AND MORE CROSSWORD WINNERS The three lucky winners of the prize crossword in issue 111 are as follows: S Buchalter, Greater Manchester R Fraser, Highlands A Nicholls, Hertfordshire Congratulations! You’ve each won a copy of The Greek Myths That Shape the Way We Think by Richard Buxton. We will post your prizes out as soon as possible.…