United Kingdom
James Hadfield: His Attempt on King George III’s Life
James Hadfield was charged with high treason after attempting to assassinate King George III at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on the evening of 15 May 1800. Hadfield was sitting in the second row from the orchestra towards the middle of the pit as King George III entered his box. As usual the King began…
Read More
Caroline Norton: Fighting Against Injustice
Caroline Norton was born in London on 22 March 1808 to actor, solider, and colonial administrator Thomas Sheridan and his novelist wife, Caroline Henriette Callander. In 1817, the same year that Madame Récamier’s good friend, Madame de Staël died, Thomas also died. His family was then left penniless. Luckily, Prince Frederick, Duke of York and…
Read More
Emma Hardinge Britten: Spiritualist Medium of the 1800s
Emma Hardinge Britten was an English advocate for the early Modern Spiritualist Movement and is remembered as a writer, orator, and practitioner of the movement. She was born in London, England, in 1823. Her father Ebenezer was a schoolteacher who died in 1834 when Britten was eleven years old.
Read More
Duchess of Kendal the Longtime Mistress of George I
The Duchess of Kendal was the longtime mistress of King George I. Described as a thin woman, she was said to be “lean and haggard” and was known as “the Scarecrow” in Germany, as “the Maypole” in England, and called “the Goose” by Jacobites, who most famously taunted her in the Scottish ballad Cam Ye…
Read More
SS Princess Alice Sinking Tragedy of 1878
The SS Princess Alice was a passenger paddle steamer formerly known as the PS Bute. It sank in 1878 after it collided with the big heavy iron collier Bywell Castle on the River Thames. The accident was a devastating tragedy and the greatest loss of life of any British inland waterway accident.
Read More
Roderick Maclean: Attempted Assassination of Queen Victoria
Roderick Maclean was a Scotsman who attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria with a pistol. It happened on 2 March 1882, at Windsor, England. His motive was purportedly because he received a curt reply to some poetry that he mailed to the Queen.
Read More
William Brodie: Double Life of an 18th Century Man
Deacon Brodie was born William Brodie and appeared to be a respectable Scotsman. He was a cabinet-maker, Edinburgh city councilor, and deacon of the trades guild. However, it was revealed in 1788 that he had been maintaining a secret life as a housebreaker and thief and that he was doing so because he found it…
Read More
Louis Philippe I: King of the French From 1830 to 1848
Born on 6 October 1773, Louis Philippe became King of the French from 1830 to 1848. He was the son of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Orléans and Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon (sister-in-law to the Princesse de Lamballe). The younger Louis Philippe inherited the title of the Duke de Chartres and was known for…
Read More
Spiritualism: A Religious Movement of the 1800s
Spiritualism was a religious movement that first appeared in the 1840s. It happened in upstate New York in what was called the “Burned-over District” where the religious revivals and new religious movements created such spiritual fervor it seemed to set the area on fire. This area also embraced an environment where many people thought direct…
Read More
English Wedding: An Extravagant One in 1853
Details from an English wedding in “high life” happened in the ancient parish of Prestwich-cum-Oldham in Lancashire in 1853 at the parish church, St Mary the Virgin. The extravagant wedding, which was “Old English” in style took place between 26-year-old Dudley Clarke Fitzgerald de Ros, 23rd Baron de Ros (equerry to the Prince Consort) and…
Read More