The First Royal Visit to Australia

HRH Prince Alfred, KG, Duke of Edinburgh

In general, I have tried to limit these blogs to England and particularly London.  But, of course, during the reign of Queen Victoria, England, and therefore London, was the centre of one of the largest empires the world had ever known.  Events that took place in the far-flung reaches of the Empire reverberated around the world and what could have had as profound an effect as a first Royal visit to Australia. 

Considering that it was barely more than a decade since a degree of self-government had been granted to the individual colonies (with the exception of Western Australia) and that the last convict ship had not yet arrived in Australia, a visit from a Royal Prince, one of Queen Victoria’s children, was a momentous event.  This was to be even more the case when, much to the embarrassment of the colony of New South Wales, an attempt was made on the life of a Royal Prince.

The story is too interesting to be told in only one blog.  This is the first of a series of three that will discuss the 1867-68 visit of Prince Alfred Ernest Albert, the second son and the fourth child of Queen Victoria and second in line to the British throne. 

Born on 6 August 1844, at the time of his visit to Australia, he was intituled Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Alfred indicated, from an early age, that he wanted to enter the navy and in 1858, at the age of fourteen, having passed the midshipman’s examination he was appointed in that rank to HMS Euryalis. Over the next decade he rose through the ranks, being appointed Captain in 1866 and being given command of the newly refitted 26-gun wooden screw frigate HMS Galatea in 1867 for a world cruise.

In February, after some time in the Mediterranean he departed for Brazil and a state visit with the Emperor of that country.  This was followed by two months at the Cape, and on 31 October HMS Galatea, under the command of the 32-year-old Prince, arrived in Adelaide, South Australia. His six-month stay in Australia was to be both a triumph and a disaster frequently overlaid with elements of farce.

Typical of the latter was the controversy which started even before the Prince’s arrival in the country.  Where was he to land?  Much to the annoyance of those who supported Port Adelaide, by then the principal port in South Australia, the reception committee decided on Glenelg.  It was selected because it had been the site of the first landing of colonists in South Australia. Then, too, despite uncertainty as to the date of the Prince’s arrival, there was the question of the decorations; they

were mean and tawdry, so it was said—unworthy of the city—unfit for the reception of a Prince; King William Street was likened to a rag fair, and every epithet exhaustive of condemnation was heaped upon them.[1]

Eventually the date of the departure from South Africa was confirmed and plans were made for the arrival of the Prince.  Days passed but the ship did not arrive.  Finally, on 27 October the signal guns rang out: bang, bang, fizz.  The third of the three shots meant to herald the sighting of the ship provided a flash without a bang! Even so, the excitement was intense.

Almost every one turned out into the streets, which wore a more lively and busier appearance than they had done for many a day previous. After wandering about for more than an hour in a most purposeless manner, irritated and excited by all kinds of contradictory rumours, they gradually dispersed with the unpleasant conviction that they had been hoaxed.[2]

Indeed, they had been hoaxed. But a few days later, when HMS Galatea actually did arrive, it was barely noticed as it slipped into Holdfast Bay.  It was not until five excursionists from Adelaide rowed out the to ship that Glenelg, Adelaide and the newspapers were able to confirm that the Prince had arrived.[3] 

A long and arduous schedule was planned for the Prince as everyone sought to engage him in formal and informal duties.  As James Dominick Woods notes, had the Prince followed his itinerary, he “would have had three weeks of the hardest labor that ever fell to the lot of a Royal Prince in the pursuit of amusement.” But needless to say, the proposed schedule “was not adhered to.”[4]

Today, in Australia, there are a number of buildings which bear the name of Prince Alfred. Some of these, such as Prince Alfred College in Adelaide, South Australia, are so named in honour of the Prince who, in 1867, laid the foundation stone for the main building. At the ceremony, the Rev. Mr. Watsford described the new college as one where “a sound and superior education will be imparted both to the sons of the members of the Wesleyan Church, and to all who may desire to avail themselves of its advantages.”[5]

But not all the monuments which bear the Prince’s name derive from such happy events.  The Royal Prince Alfred Memorial Hospital in Sydney, was erected, as the name suggests, as a memorial and as a thanksgiving after the Prince survived an attempt on his life. So, what was Prince Alfred doing in Australia, where did he go, what kind of reception did he receive, how did the assassination attempt come about? And what, if any, were the ramifications of the attack?

For more details on Prince Alfred’s stay in South Australia, download J. D. Woods, A Narrative of the Visit of H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh, K.G., to South Australia, by clicking here.

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[1] J. D. Woods, A Narrative of the Visit of H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh, K.G., to South Australia (Adelaide, 1868), p. 4.

[2] Ibid., p. 6.

[3] Ibid., p. 7.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Laying the Foundation-Stone of Prince Alfred College,” South Australian Advertiser (6 November 1867), p. 2.

Knackered

Thomas Rowlandson, A Dead Horse on a Knacker's Cart

It must have been around 1967 when I made my first trip to Great Britain from the United States. It was there, I am reasonably certain, that I first heard the term, “knackered.” Someone used the expression “I am totally knackered,” and I gathered, from the context, that it meant that they were completely exhausted. I liked the word and soon discovered that in the context of the “knacker’s yard,” it was a place in which horses that were no longer useful, whose work lives were done, were taken to be slaughtered.

 It is difficult in the second decade of the twenty-first century to realise that the greatest source of rural labour and virtually all transport was horse-power. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, W. J. Gordon puts the number of horses required to keep the wheels of London turning at over 300,000, and Sally Mitchell estimates that by 1901, “at least 400,000 working horses pulled passengers and loads on the streets of London.” Indeed, Gordon noted, if all the horses required in the great metropolis were placed in a single file, “they would reach along the bridle-ways from St. Paul's to John-o'-Groat's.”

While it is difficult to know the exact numbers of horses in all of England at any point in the nineteenth century, estimates for the latter years of the Queen’s reign suggest that there may have been as many as 3.3 million. Citing a Parliamentary Report, Henry Mayhew, that indefatigable chronicler of the street life of the great city at mid-century, tells us that “strangers coming from the country frequently describe the streets of London as smelling of dung like a stable-yard.” This is hardly surprising when one considers even the most conservative estimates of the amount of horse manure dropped weekly in the streets of the metropolis at more than 2,000 tons.

Clearly, Victoria’s England was a horse-drawn society, and while a number of attempts were made to better the lot of animals, the treatment of horses appears to have been honoured more in the breach than in the observance. Although horses were not, as some have suggested, the automobiles and trucks of their day, they were the motive power for the transport of people and goods. All too often abused, their working lives were short and brutish. The working life of an omnibus horse could be as little as two years; it would have been unusual for one to last for as long as five. Frequently the animals were mistreated in order to squeeze the last bit of working value from them before their bodies, living or dead, went to the knacker’s yard. Anna Sewell, in Black Beauty, has one of the characters, the aptly named Skinner, describe his attitude toward his working horses; “my business, my plan is to work 'em as long as they'll go, and then sell 'em for what they'll fetch, at the knacker's or elsewhere.”

There were, of course, attempts to reduce the cruelty to horses, but it was an on-going and often up-hill battle. The most frequent forms of cruelty seem to have been as a result of badly treated horses being forced to pull heavily overloaded wagons. A typical report from 1854 describes just such a case, noting that there were several such cases.

Several flagrant cases of Cruelty to Horses, by driving with heavy loads, when quite unfit for any kind of work, have been brought before the police magistrates lately. One of the worst cases was that of Mr. Robert Cheal. He is carrier to her Majesty, and it was while drawing a wagon heavily laden with wine for the royal cellar, that one of his horses was perceived in a most deplorable condition. An officer deposed to seeing the carman, Thomas Perren, standing at the horse’s head, and lashing the poor beast most unmercifully. The wagon was on a dead level, but the horse was quite unable to stir. Mr. Beadon the magistrate before whom the charge was made, satisfied himself as to the state of horse, and said it was only fit for the knacker. The wagon was stated to have contained 54 dozen of wine, a heavy load even for a horse in good condition.

Nonetheless, both the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Animals’ Friend Society worked to reduce equine cruelty. In one month in 1865, the RSPCA claimed in The Times to have achieved 84 convictions as it continued to bring cases for the ill-treatment of horses. But clearly this was a mere drop in the ocean of cruelty. Once a horse arrived at the knacker’s yard, it was killed, broken down and everything that could possibly be used was squeezed from the animal’s corpse. Estimates of the number of animals sent to the knackers’ yards varied. At mid-century, according to one of Henry Mayhew’s informants, the number was around 720 per week. A quarter of a century later, Sir Arthur A. Helps put the figure at four or five hundred per week in London alone.

Not all those horses whose work life was finished wound up in the knackers’ yards. Some few were able to enjoy their retirement years in comfort. Between the stables at Buckingham Palace and those at Windsor, there was room for about 200 horses. The Queen, in addition to being an accomplished horse-woman herself, was by 1840, patron to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As Helen Rappaport notes, “when they became too old for work, the queen’s horses were never sent to the knacker’s yard but were put out to grass in Windsor’s numerous lush paddocks.” Sadly, it would appear that such treatment was reserved for only a minuscule number of working horses.

In the middle years of the century, there were more than twenty knackers’ yards in London. According to one of Mayhew's informants,

The proprietors of these yards purchase live and dead horses. They contract for them with large firms, such as brewers, coal- merchants, and large cab and 'bus yards, giving so much per head for their old live and dead horses through the year. The price varies from 21. to 50s. the carcass. The knackers also have contractors in the country (harness-makers and others), who bring or send up to town for them the live and dead stock of those parts. The dead horses are brought to the yard—two or three upon one cart, and sometimes five. The live ones are tied to the tail of these carts, and behind the tail of each other. Occasionally a string of fourteen or fifteen are brought up, head to tail, at one time. The live horses are purchased merely for slaughtering. 

The treatment of the horses brought to the knackers’ yards, was described by The Times as “most disgraceful,” and it went on to thunder that they “should not be tolerated in any civilized country.” Referring to the yards as “dens of infamy,” the article went on to quote the evidence of a number of police who visited the yards. They found starving horses and piles of dead and dying animals in filthy, rat-ridden yards. One police-sergeant testified, “it was the first time I had seen such horrors, and it made me quite ill for some time after.”

But in the end, the knacker’s yards provided a significant service. In a period not generally recognized for its recycling, the yards were able to produce something of value from virtually all of the remains of the horses. Amidst the foul stench and dreadful smells of these slaughter yards, horse-hair from the mane and the tail was salvaged for stuffing mattresses, glue was made from the hooves, shoes and nails were re-used, skins were tanned for leather, bones were ground for manure, fat was boiled off and used as grease. What remained of muscle was cut up for meat and sold to the 1000 cat’s and dog’s meat vendors in London who, in turn, sold it to the owners of pets. Like any massive enterprise, there were always stories of misuse. Judith Flanders points out that “in theory, horsemeat was not sold for human consumption, but most people were sure that it was.” Even if the meat and the organs were not sold for “local” consumption, there was always the possibility that the sausages and meat pies that were eaten by many of the workers, might contain the remains of one of those horses that met their end in the knacker’s yard.

To see, and download, a PDF copy of the first edition of Black Beauty, click here.

“I saw the glitter of polished steel”

The tools of the trade

It is almost impossible for us to imagine the pain that was a part of surgery before the development of anæsthetics in the middle years of the nineteenth century. Yet even when the efficacy of ether and chloroform had been demonstrated, there were those who opposed the use of these agents on moral and biblical grounds.  There were, inevitably, deaths in the early use of anæsthetics, some of which, with greater knowledge of the most appropriate procedures for the use and delivery of these powerful agents might have been avoided. But there were also successes, and with their use surgeons were granted two great gifts, the gift of time and capacity to engage in operations which previously had been too difficult to achieve while the patient was conscious.

Fanny Burney

In order to get some sense of what surgery was like prior to the use of anæsthetics, we have the descriptions of patients who survived major operations while fully awake. On 30 September 1811, the 59-year-old Madame d’Arblay, better known as the writer, Fanny Burney, underwent a Mastectomy while living in France. Over the next several months, following the operation, she composed a letter to her sister, Esther, describing her experience.  It was, she wrote,

… a terror that surpasses all description, & the most torturing pain.  Yet – when the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast – cutting through veins – arteries – flesh – nerves – I needed no injunction not to restrain my cries.  I began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision - & I almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still! so excruciating was the agony.  When the wound was made, & the instrument was withdrawn, the pain seemed undiminished, for the air that suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but sharp & forked poniards … presently the terrible cutting was renewed … I then felt the Knife ling against the breast bone – scraping it! –

The operation was over, including the dressing of the wound, in twenty minutes.  All those involved were deeply affected and the surgeon, Dominique Jean Larrey, one of founders of modern military surgery, was described by Fanny Burney as “pale nearly as myself, his face streaked with blood, its expression depicting grief, apprehension & almost horror.”

Not only was there the horror of the operation so terrifyingly described, there was the fear, the dread, that the patient inevitably felt leading up to the actual surgery.  Florence Nightingale, summed it up when she said,

Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.  Remember, he is face to face with his enemy all the time, internally wrestling with him, having long imaginary conversations with him.

In a footnote on the same page, she goes on, “There are many physical operations where … the danger is in a direct ratio to the time the operation lasts; and … the operator’s success will be in direct ratio to his quickness.”

 In this regard, clearly, battlefield amputations, despite the dread with which they were surely faced, at least did not engender the prolonged sense of panic that would have been the case for those, like Fanny Burney, as they anticipated surgery without anæsthetics. As terrible as her ordeal was, Fanny Burney survived and went on to live another 28 years, dying in Bath at the age of 87.

One would have to think, that with the advent of anæsthetics in the mid-1840s, their use would quickly become commonplace.  But that was not the case.  The use of such agents, it was argued, was against the law of God, pain was required for survival during and after an operation, individuals were somehow robbed of their awareness and this was dangerous during surgery.  Surgery was always the last resort and then, in most cases, it was fast, fierce and incredibly painful. Yet, as Stephanie Snow has pointed out, “from December 1846 until at least the 1860s, anæsthesia was a selective practice.” For many surgeons, pain was seen as an important element of a successful operation.

While pain may have been viewed as necessary, surgeons were not sadist.  They did not enjoy the pain they caused.  John Abernathy, of Barts, on his way to operate, when asked how he felt responded “as if I was going to a hanging,” and one of his students recalled seeing him, following a difficult amputation, “with tears streaming down his face, vomiting.”

By the 1840s, the most outstanding surgeon in Britain would have had to have been Robert Liston. Known for his speed, skill and, when operating, the utter ruthlessness required in the pre-anæsthetic years, he offers a useful insight into how some of the best surgeons were quickly converted to pain relief in operations. Liston straddled the years from before the advent of anæsthesia to the period in which, although not yet fully accepted, it was coming into more common use.  Before his own use of anæsthetics, Liston was known for the speed with which he could perform an amputation.  As he reached for the knife he would address the gallery, “time me gentlemen.” And time him they did.  It was not uncommon for him to remove a limb and tie off the blood vessels in around thirty seconds.

Thirty seconds of remarkable dexterity, flashing blades, rapid movements and brilliant showmanship.  Thirty seconds of such pain that few patients are ever able to put it adequately into words.  The memory of those thirty seconds will haunt them for the rest of their lives. If they live.

According to his biographer, “it was said of Liston that when he amputated the gleam of his knife was followed so instantaneously by the sound of sawing as to make the two actions appear almost simultaneous.”

Robert Liston in the operating theatre

On 21 December 1846 Liston entered the operating theatre and announced, “We are going to try a Yankee dodge today, gentlemen, for making men insensible.”  The Yankee dodge, was using ether to anæsthetize a patient, in this case, before removing his leg above the knee. The notes for the operation indicate that the entire procedure, including the tying off of the blood vessels, took twenty-five seconds. As the patient regained consciousness, he asked “when are you going to begin?” Post-operatively Liston comments, “this Yankee dodge, gentlemen, beats mesmerism hollow!” Liston was well aware of what was going on in the medical world and he soon had John Snow on his team, administering ether to his surgical patients.

Although by mid-century, chloroform was increasingly become a tool for surgery on the battlefield, there were still those who either opposed it or had serious doubts about its use. One of these was the Principal Medical Officer of the British Expeditionary Army in the Crimea, Sir John Hall, M.D., K.C.B., F.R.C.S. In a letter to Lord Raglan, Commander of the British troops in the Crimea, Hall wrote, cautioning against the use of chloroform, “for, however barbarous it may appear, the smart of the knife is a powerful stimulus, and it is much better to hear a man howl lustily, than to see him sink silently into his grave.”

Amputees before anæsthesia recorded amazing examples of sangfroid during surgery, including that of children, often buttressed by strong religious convictions.  Others admitted to real pain and terror. … general anæsthesia not only relived patients but gave surgeons time to operate more accurately and also pursue alternative operations which avoided amputation.

It is hard today to even imagine what it must have been like to undergo surgery in the years before the use of anesthetics. Certainly, though, by the 1860s, pain in surgery was becoming a thing of the past.  The next big step forward was to figure out why so many patients died after what appeared to be successful surgery and to determine what to do to reduce those numbers.

Clerical Errors, a review

As readers of this blog will have gathered, I enjoy a bit of historical gossip and what could possibly be more fun than stories about clerics and their alleged sexual peccadilloes? If you share this rather wayward inquisitiveness, you should really have a look at Tom Hughes new book, Clerical Errors.

 

Hughes is an expert in just such scandals.  The stories he tells are carefully documented, often using sources that have been either inaccessible or largely untapped.  Among the strengths of his book is his careful analyses of the procedural issues surrounding cases.  He not only lets us in on what was done, but on what he believes was not done.  It presents us with a view of Victorian legal values and practices which were, at times, “slip-shod” if not biased.

In addition, since the cases inevitably involve power relationships, Hughes’ book paints an interesting picture of both the formal and informal structures of both Victorian class and gender.

In this kind of writing, it would be easy to slip into the error of confusing fact and opinion.  While Hughes offers his opinion, he is clear in presenting it as just that. 

This is Hughes' third book dealing with what were cases of alleged misconduct on that part of clergy and is the first in a planned three volume series.

If there is anyone who knows about British clerical scandals, it is Tom Hughes. He has spent more than two decades building a database and writing about clerical errors. All of his books are available through Amazon and the Kindle edition of Clerical Errors is available for the very reasonable price of US$5.49.

St Pancras Station and Hotel

John O'Connor, St Pancras at Sunset (1884)

With the expansion of capital and the emergence of the entrepreneurial middle class, Gothic architecture began to appear in more commercial buildings.  Much of its appeal to the middle class was, in the early days of Victoria’s reign, its romantic medievalism and its apparent simplicity. It could be judged by human, emotional criteria.  Its appeal lay in its “dignity” or its “manliness.”  One did not need, in order to criticise it, to waste time as Kenneth Clark notes, “in learning to pronounce Chiaroscuro.” Even so, much that can only be described as “trash” was erected in the name of the Gothic Revival, and the reason it was neglected for so long, again according to Clark,  “is that it produced so little on which our eyes can rest without pain.”

Many, but not all, Victorians admired St. Pancras station and hotel.  Four factors combined to give it a special appeal: its Gothic architecture, its functionality, its originality, and its comfort. The Gothic revival, which started late in the previous century, had grown out of an interest in the romanticism of the middle ages and had been largely confined to the upper classes.  In its early phases, the revival had dictated home and church designs particularly after the commissioners appointed under the Church Building Act (1818) discovered that it was significantly cheaper to build a Gothic church than a Neoclassical one.

Meanness as well as meagreness progressively controlled the design of their churches.  Of the 612 churches built for the commissioners, more than 550 were Gothic or some related style.

By the time St. Pancras Station and hotel were erected, the Gothic revival was in full swing and while the station itself may appeal for a number of other reasons, the hotel was (and remains) one of the great examples of Victorian Gothic and, therefore, aesthetically pleasing to many, if not most, Victorians.  In addition, it is a railway hotel, an enormously functional building designed to service passengers at the height of the railway years. As the railways expanded in the second half of the century, so too did the railway hotels meant to provide accommodation for the weary traveller. And while the St. Pancras Station hotel may have been the most outstanding of these, it was not the first.  That honour goes to the Great Northern Hotel at Kings Cross, opened in 1854 and shortly followed, within the month, by the Great Western Royal Hotel (now the Hilton London Paddington). Others followed although over the years they have lost some of their original charm. These included the Grosvenor Hotel at Victoria (1861) and the Charing Cross Hotel (1865).

The Midland Grand Hotel at St. Pancras (now the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel) opened in 1873, the creation of architect George Gilbert Scott.

Victorians were great train travellers, and the opulence of St. Pancras would have attracted them. It provided all the comforts of home and, in many cases, far greater convenience, for the Midland Grand Hotel was a nineteenth century luxury hotel. It had, what, for its day, were all the modern conveniences including lifts, although the lack of individual bathrooms meant that the facilities had to be shared.  Indeed, this, plus the lifts, combined in May of 1883 to cause the death of a patron, Mr. G. J. Smith.

Mr. Smith and his wife were staying in a third-floor room when, at 2.00 in the morning, Mr. Smith apparently needed to use the water-closet.  He crossed the corridor, entered a service room, crossed the room and in the dark (the hotel had failed to supply candles to its guests) fell down an open luggage lift shaft.

Perhaps it was the contrast between the religious severity of purpose which according to Clark, characterised Gothic architecture after 1845, and the luxurious appointments inside, that gave the hotel its attraction.  What could appeal to the body and soul more than staying in a comfortable, well-appointed Cathedral?  Scott, in his Recollections, noted that the hotel “is often spoken of … as the finest building in London,” but he goes on to comment that his “own belief is that it is possibly too good for its purpose.”

Not everyone was enamoured of the hotel.  There were those who felt that Gothic architecture was a purely ecclesiastical form and that to use it for the design of commercial and residential buildings was inappropriate.  Some years earlier, Scott’s plans for the Foreign Office were rejected by the then Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston who, in his reasons offered to the Parliament, said,

It is quite true that I did object to the first plan of Mr. Scott as being Gothic, and on that account not suitable.  Gothic architecture is very fit for a church and other edifices, but I hold it to be very unfit for street architecture in a town where unquestionably a great number of our buildings are of a different kind.

Scott quickly dismissed such criticism when, in a paper presented to the Yorkshire Architectural Society, he called the “supposition that Gothic architecture is exclusively and intrinsically ecclesiastical” absurd.

Grand Staircase
St Pancras Hotel

If the hotel was “without rival … for palatial beauty, comfort and convenience,” as one writer noted in 1897, the station itself had a separate appeal.  St. Pancras Station, which opened in 1868, having been supervised by the engineer, William Henry Barlow, appealed to Victorians in much the same way as model factories, locomotives, and exhibitions of modern machinery, all things which attracted Victorians in record numbers to the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the 1862 International Exhibition. But Scott's role was lauded, at the time of his death, by The Times which declared that "Scott produced in the Midland Station at St. Pancras the most beautiful terminus in London, remakable alike for its convenience and its imposing effect."

Trainshed, St Pancras Station

The station was both functional and innovative and its functionality was increased by its originality.  The great roof, spanning 240 feet and 105 feet high at its apex was the culmination of railway shed construction.  By its size and structure, the shed allowed trains, passengers, cabs and luggage to move in dry and commodious surroundings; an appeal to the tired traveler that cannot be overlooked.

Another element of appeal, perhaps more in the case of the shed than the hotel, was the natural comparison made to other stations.  St. Pancras was bigger and more functional, and certainly more interesting both architecturally and in the engineering of its great roof than Lewis Cubitt’s station at King’s Cross or Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Matthew Digby Wyatt’s Great Western Railway terminus at Paddington.

The major criticisms of the hotel and station tend to revolve around their being seen as a single unit.  Lewis and Street, writing in 1875, two years after the Midland Grand hotel opened commented on just this relationship.

Of a class unknown to the last generation are the railway stations, some of the largest edifices of the time, but usually almost hidden by another new class of buildings, viz., the colossal hotels.  … No one … can study the way in which most of them are attached to the station buildings which they front without wishing most heartily that the engineer of the one and the architect of the other had worked somewhat more in harmony with each other.

In fact, much of the criticism appears to be rooted in an antagonism between architects and engineers and some of it is of fairly recent origin.  Sir John Summerson, for example, finds the contrast between station and hotel “ludicrous,” and H.A.N. Brockman suggests that “there is no aesthetic contact whatever between the two.”

Nonetheless, they did exist happily together.  The St. Pancras Hotel was first and foremost a railway hotel.  As such it was there to service travelers.  Thus, its very function lent an air of logic to the joining of the two structures, a logic that Victorians might well have applauded, rooted as it was in sound commercial common sense.

The criticism would, in all probability, not have interested average Victorian travelers.  They would have found both buildings to their liking, manly, Dignified, and English. Had they thought about the station and the hotel separately at all, they would undoubtedly have agreed with D. T. Timmins who wrote of the hotel in 1902 that it was “an integral part of the station itself and therefore cannot be treated of separately.”

The debate over the use of anaesthetics in childbirth

Victoria, Alfred and their children

The nineteenth century, and particularly the Victorian years, saw enormous advances in medicine. New procedures were developed, standards of cleanliness improved and for the first time pain relief was possible with the development and use of anaesthetics.  Progress, however, did not come cheaply.  Reputations were made but, equally, reputations were lost. For every group that argued for progress, there was another group to argue against it.

On 7 April 1853 Queen Victoria was delivered of a son, Prince Leopold. During the birth, she was anaesthetised with chloroform by Dr John Snow.* “The inhalation lasted fifty-three minutes.  The chloroform was given by on a handkerchief, in fifteen minim doses.”** Four years later, in 1857, John Snow was in attendance again and  again employed chloroform in the delivery, this time, of Princess Beatrice.

The Queen's decision to have chloroform administered during the birth was not made lightly.  There had been discussions as early as 1848, with Prince Albert who strongly supported the use of the anaesthetic, and the Queen’s physicians, who apparently had reservations about it. While it had not been used in the delivery of either Princess Louise (1848) or Prince Arthur (1850), when it was finally employed for the birth of the Queen’s seventh child, Her Majesty was delighted.  Writing in her Journal, she had nothing but praise. “Dr Snow administered ‘that blessed Chloroform’ & the effect was soothing, quieting & delightful beyond measure.” Indeed, as she noted, she had “never recovered better.”

Just a little over a month after the Queen gave birth to Prince Leopold, an article appeared in the Lancet, criticising the administration of chloroform to the Queen.  Although not named in the article, it was clearly an attack on Dr John Snow by the owner/editor of the journal, Thomas Wakley. The article was mildly hysterical in tone claiming that

Intense astonishment … has been excited throughout the profession by the rumour that her Majesty during her last labour was placed under the influence of chloroform, an agent which has unquestionably caused instantaneous death in a considerable number of cases. … we could not imagine that any one had incurred the awful responsibility of advising the administration of chloroform to her Majesty during a perfectly natural labour with a seventh child.

Much of the literature related to the consequences of the use of chloroform in the birth of Prince Leopold emphasised the wider acceptance of anaesthetics as a result. While the Royal approval of the use of chloroform might have provided what was at least an informal imprimatur, not all of the medical profession was accepting of the use of anaesthetics, especially chloroform, in childbirth. As The Lancet went on to point out, certainly incorrectly in the face of the Queen’s own statement, the so-called administration of chloroform was all a pretence employed because “some officious meddlers about the Court so far overruled her Majesty’s responsible professional advisers as to lead to the pretence…”

H and T Connor have suggested that it is unlikely that lay opinion was influenced since the press reports of the birth did not, in general, mention the use of anaesthetics. That may indeed have been the case, but by the time of the Queen’s accouchement, the use of chloroform in parturition was common enough for one correspondent to write to the Association Medical Journal shortly after the Queen’s delivery,

Your announcement, a few weeks ago, of the Queen’s accouchement under chloroform and that, under no other than ordinary circumstances, the royal child-birth had been treated by anaesthesia, doubtless gave rise to considerable emotion and excitement both in the professional and the female world. … For some time, however, before this, it was well known that, in certain districts, the married—especially the young married—women, even of respectable society, had been in much agitation respecting the recent discussions upon chloroform, and had become so solicitous for its administration in their own cases…

The debate continued and seems to have accelerated after the Queen gave birth to her seventh child.  The all-male medical profession engaged in rather convoluted arguments to justify the pain of childbirth.  To offer succour to women in labour was, some argued, “meddling or interference” and could not be defended.

If labour be undeniably a physiologic process for the birth of human offspring, and if anatomy and physiology have proved that this process cannot be obtained without fulfilling the Divine enunciation, ‘that in sorrow and pain woman should bring forth’, the whole of this being notwithstanding perfectly consistent with the health of mother and child,--what doctrine can be an excuse for mischievous meddling with such a miracle of contrivance?

Some of the criticism was undeniable valid.  There had been deaths with the use of chloroform. Indeed, its popularity was such as to lead to inexperienced, and even those totally untrained in medical procedures, to act as anaesthetists. Beyond that, even those with a degree of medical training were not necessarily conversant with the best means of administering chloroform and in some cases may have been dangerously enthusiastic in its use. 

John Snow, however, was meticulous and careful.  He was concerned about regulating the dosage and even developed a mask for proper administration of chloroform although this was not used with Victoria. Instead he employed the “open-drop” method where the chloroform was dropped onto a cloth covering the face of the Queen.

Snow was not the first doctor to use chloroform.  It was first used in childbirth by James Young Simpson, Professor of Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh, who had discovered its properties in 1847. Simpson reported his cases in The Lancet, detailing nine of these in the issue of 11 December 1847. In the first case it was the mother’s second birth. “In her first confinement she had been three days in labour, and the infant had at last been removed by craniotomy.”*** Of the effect of the chloroform in the first case he wrote; the patient

...did not awake till after the placenta was removed, and then spoke of having “enjoyed a very comfortable sleep.” She was not in any degree aware that the child was born; and when, in a few minutes, it was brought in . . . I was a matter of no small difficulty to persuade the astonished and delighted mother  that the child … was really her own infant.

It was the work of Simpson and Snow that effectively changed the nature of childbirth through the introduction of the use of chloroform.  Questions as to its safety were effectively laid to rest in 1853 with its use by Queen Victoria, and by the time of his death in 1858, at the age of 45, He had, according to Sir Peter Froggatt,

… no deaths in over 4000 chloroform cases, often bad risk ones, … he anaesthetised for over 30 leading London surgeons and included the Queen and members of the social and commercial élite among his cases …

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**A minim is 1/60th of a fluid dram or about the equal of one drop.

***Craniotomy involved the reduction in the size of the unborn child’s head and was used where labour was obstructed.  It was used in cases of foetal death and made vaginal delivery possible rather than run the far greater risk of performing a caesarean section before the advent of anaesthetics.