Tiny Histories

by Dixe Wills

  There is some uncertainty as to the precise nature of the happy accident that brought fire from this concoction. The popular tale is that Walker had stuck a stick into it, presumably to stir the mixture, and was then attempting to clean the stick by wiping it on some rough surface or other when the friction caused it to burst into flames. The truth seems more likely, as reported by the Gateshead Observer in 1852 that, ‘By the accidental friction on the hearth of a match dipped in the mixture, a light was obtained. The hint was not thrown away.’ That article was written 26 years after the event, but it is the closest to a contemporary report we have.

  The chemist knew that Fortune had smiled upon him, and by 1827 he had started selling his friction matches under the brand name ‘Congreves’ (taking the name from a rocket invented by Sir William Congreve). Each box contained 50 cardboard matches and a piece of sandpaper on which they could be struck – all for the price of a shilling.

  Matches have been through many more developments since. The use of white phosphorous was supposed to be an improvement on Walker’s formula when it was used in place of antimony sulphide, but it had deeply unpleasant side effects, including bone disorders, for those manufacturing them. This led to a strike in 1888 at Bryant and May factories by London ‘match girls’.

  Shockingly, there had been no need to produce matches using white phosphorous for decades, since the ‘safety match’ had been invented in 1844 by the Swede Gustav Erik Pasch. He created a match without white phosphorous and had replaced the usual sandpaper supplied for striking a match with a rough surface containing the harmless red phosphorous. The matches themselves would not ignite by ordinary friction or by rubbing against each other, but when the match-head was flicked across the red phosphorous, the chemical reaction combined with the friction ignited a flame. Red phosphorous is still typically used on the striking surface of modern matchboxes.

  John Walker, for reasons unknown, did not bother to patent his idea – though, since his matches gained a reputation for sending gobbets of flaming chemicals about the place when struck (leading to bans in France and Germany) it may have been just as well. It did mean, however, that others who came after him were able to improve on his lucky strike, which has culminated in the relatively safe and effective matches we have today.

  Politics

  Politics may be ‘the art of the possible’, as German statesman Otto von Bismarck opined, but it’s also subject to unpredictable and apparently inconsequential events that make possible the seemingly impossible too. A stroke of luck can prove decisive in setting the country on a new course, while a single misjudgment may change the political landscape entirely.

  A young woman misjudges the path of a horse

  Ask the woman or man in the street what the defining event of the suffragette movement was – aside from women actually winning the vote in 1928 – and chances are you’ll receive a reply along the lines of, ‘There was that woman who committed suicide by throwing herself in front of the King’s horse.’

  And there’s no denying that they’d have a point (although many people mistakenly name Emmeline Pankhurst as having carried out the deed) for it caused a sensation at the time and the grainy 14-second film of the incident remains a popular, if ghoulish, view on the internet today. What the clip shows is a stream of horses galloping around Tattenham Corner at Epsom Racecourse on 4 June 1913, Derby Day. After the main field has gone by, a young woman, Emily Wilding Davison, steps out from the crowd, takes a few hurried paces onto the course and turns to face the final five runners. Two pass on the inside of her before she is struck at great speed by the third, Anmer, a racehorse owned by King George V. She tumbles over backwards. Anmer falls, unseating his jockey, Herbert Jones. The horse gets up but Jones lies flat out on the grass. The crowd catches its breath for a second before pouring onto the course, engulfing the two motionless figures.

  Anmer finished the Derby jockey-less and went on to compete in several more races. Herbert Jones was mildly concussed but recovered soon afterwards. The 40-year-old Davison was knocked unconscious and died four days later in Epsom Cottage Hospital. She had suffered a fractured skull and other internal injuries.

  The story – though horrifying – seems simple enough: Emily Davison, the well known activist with the militant Women’s Social and Political Union who had been arrested nine times for crimes that included arson, and who had been force-fed 49 times while on hunger strike in prison, had gone one step further and martyred herself for the cause of women’s suffrage, choosing the king’s horse to ram home her point.

  Scratch below the surface, though, and it appears that this was not really what happened at all. The first problem with the story is that Davison was found to have purchased a return ticket to Epsom. Furthermore, she had made plans to go on holiday with her sister. Neither of these are the actions of a woman intent on ending her life.

  So, if she was not trying to commit suicide, the question remains as to what exactly her intentions were that fateful June day.

  Evidence has emerged that Davison was one of several suffragettes who, prior to the Derby, had spent some time in a park close to her mother’s house, apparently training themselves in the little-practiced art of grabbing at passing horses. The group are then said to have drawn straws to determine which of them would attend the race meeting to put their newly honed skills into action.

  When she was taken to the local hospital after the event, Davison was found to be carrying two purple-green-and-white flags. This led to speculation that she had originally been planning to affix one to Anmer somehow, so that the king’s horse ran the rest of the race flying the colours of the suffragette movement. An investigation filmed for Channel 4 by sports presenter Clare Balding unearthed the story of a ‘Votes for Women’ sash that was reputed to have been found on the course after the incident. If it had been dropped by Davison at the moment of impact with Anmer, it would suggest that she had been attempting to slip it around the horse’s neck. The sash went up for auction and was donated by the winning bidder to the Houses of Parliament, where it can now be viewed.

  In the famous film of the episode, Davison is clearly reaching up with both hands as her chosen horse approaches, though it is impossible to see whether she is holding anything in them, and indeed, it rather appears that she is not. The first British newsreel was broadcast in 1910, so it’s somewhat surprising that just three years later, no fewer than three cameras were filming Tattenham Corner that day, catching the collision from different angles. Footage from the other two cameras, though not completely conclusive, does tend to give more support to the sash theory.

  It therefore seems more than likely that, rather than attempting to kill herself, Emily Wilding Davison simply misjudged the line the horse was taking. Given the fact that she had just a couple of seconds to position herself correctly in order to throw a sash over the onrushing steed (assuming that was her intention), and this was her first attempt to do so during a proper race, it’s not altogether surprising that the tragedy occurred.

  Whilst placing a sash over the king’s horse would certainly have caused a stir, the death of such a prominent suffragette in such dramatic circumstances did much to help stimulate support for votes for women. This was particularly true among men who, with notable exceptions, had been slow to warm to the cause. Davison’s death also led directly to the creation of the Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage, an association formed the same year by the actor Maud Arncliffe-Sennett and which largely drew supporters from Glasgow and Edinburgh.

  The campaign was halted for the duration of the Great War, during which the Representation of the People Act 1918 was passed. The Act of Parliament gave the vote to women for the first time in the UK, which in that day included the whole of Ireland. However, it was restricted to those aged 30 or over (men could vote from 21, or 19 if they had seen service in the war) and only then if they were a property owner (or married to one), or if they met one or other obscure criteria, such as being
a graduate who lived in a constituency with a university. It wasn’t until 1928 that the playing field was levelled and women were granted the same voting rights as men.

  It’s fitting that Emily Davison has been honoured in the Houses of Parliament, even if it is not for the way she met her end. In order to be able to enter on her 1911 census form that she resided at the House of Commons, she spent the night of 2 April hiding in a cupboard in the chapel of the Palace of Westminster. In 1990, the Labour MP Tony Benn secretly placed a plaque on the cupboard commemorating the incident. The plaque is still there today.

  A king’s intemperate outburst is taken at face value

  English kings have garnered something of a reputation down the ages for not being the most temperate and good-natured examples of humanity. Those who wielded real executive power, unfettered by a counterweight as pesky as a parliament, probably saw it as part of the job description to throw their weight around and generally stomp about armed with a surly, irritable mien. Of course, for centuries it was generally accepted that whoever was monarch had been anointed by God to reign over the nation. It’s little wonder, therefore, that kings expected to get their own way and would turn unpleasant if they felt their will was being obstructed, no matter how trifling the impediment might be.

  Henry II, the first Plantagenet king, was certainly not known for suffering fools gladly. Coming to the throne in 1154 at the tender age of 21, he inherited a kingdom that had been wracked by the tumult of an 18-year civil war that had only very recently been brought to a close (see Henry I indulges in a few lampreys too many). A firm hand was needed if England and Normandy – the lands over which he ruled – were to become strong again and Henry made it plain from day one of his reign that he would brook no opposition in making that happen. However, there was one person with whom he would enjoy very cordial relations: his chancellor and right-hand man, Thomas Becket (the man whom we used to know as Thomas à Becket).

  Becket was born in London, probably in 1120. His parents were from Normandy (Caen and Rouen) and had settled in the English capital, where Gilbert Becket had become a wealthy merchant. An intelligent and charming young man, Thomas soon found himself appointed by Henry as the archdeacon of Canterbury on the recommendation of Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury. He made a success of the post, and the king duly made him his chancellor, an extremely powerful position in the kingdom.

  When Theobald died in 1161, Henry took it into his head to make Thomas archbishop of Canterbury, imagining that by this appointment he would control the Church. Becket warned his royal friend that it would not be a good idea to choose him. As head of the Church in England, he explained, he would feel obliged to stand up for the institution even if that meant going against the king’s express wishes. Naturally, Henry prevailed and, on 2 June 1162, Thomas Becket was rather reluctantly ordained. Almost overnight the newly fledged archbishop abandoned his somewhat Rabelaisian courtier persona and put on the mantle of the pious and incorruptible clergyman. Indeed, he threw himself so wholeheartedly into the rôle that he gives every appearance of having had a religious conversion. He seems to have become the devout God-fearing individual he supposed an archbishop of Canterbury would have to be.

  It did not take long for Becket’s prophecy to come true. Two years after taking up his post, things came to a head when Henry called a conference at which he attempted to secularise the judicial system. At the time, England had two types of courts, which were presided over by the State or the Church. The Church courts, which had the right to try allegedly errant clergymen, tended to be a great deal more lenient than those run by the State, with even priests who were rapists and murderers allowed to atone for their crimes by a mere act of penitence. This was an inconsistency Henry wished to abolish by eradicating the Church courts. Becket initially accepted this move but then changed his mind.

  The archbishop dug his heels in and found himself summoned to Northampton Castle for a frank exchange of views with Henry’s supporters about the matter. Becket quickly realised that, to all intents and purposes, this was a kangaroo court trying him for his refusal to submit to the king’s demands. Fearing that he was due to be imprisoned or quietly eliminated, he escaped from the castle while everyone slept and fled with all haste to France, pursued to the coast by the king’s envoys. He lived for a couple of years at the Abbey of Pontigny before spending four more at the Abbey of Sens, all the while continuing as Archbishop of Canterbury.

  Things might conceivably have continued in this fashion – with Canterbury Cathedral permanently an archbishop short and the English Church (with its massive estates and business interests) trundling along with a perpetually absent leader – until either Henry or Thomas died. However, in May 1170, the hornets’ nest was poked again. Henry decided to have his son, Henry the Younger, crowned king, in recognition that he would indeed become king when he (Henry II) died. This was a practice carried out by the Capetians, the dynasty that ruled France from 987 to 1328, and Henry felt it might strengthen his own hand on English soil if an obvious successor had not only been lined up but crowned to boot.

  In ordinary circumstances, the ceremony would have been performed by the archbishop of Canterbury. Instead, Henry chose Roger de Pont l’Évêque, Archbishop of York, to do the duties, thus snubbing Becket and, for that matter, putting himself in the wrong with Pope Alexander III as well. It turned out to be a cunning move, for the king had correctly anticipated that the clergyman would be itching to re-crown Henry the Younger himself simply to reassert his rights as Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry met Becket at Fréteval in Normandy in July and offered him the chance to carry out a second coronation ceremony if only he returned to England. The archbishop duly made his way back in December 1170 after a six-year exile. It’s fair to say that he felt a certain amount of trepidation about his homecoming, particularly since he was held in contempt by England’s powerful barons. (A second crowning of Henry the Younger would eventually take place in 1172, but by then Becket would be long dead.)

  With a crushing inevitability, relations between the archbishop and the noblemen deteriorated even further and Becket chose Christmas Day to excommunicate from the Church one Ranulf de Broc and his partisans. It was this action that was to be Becket’s undoing. The king had taken himself off to Normandy for Christmas, but news of the excommunication did not take long to reach him.

  Posterity has handed down to us several variations of what happened next. What we do know is that Henry became particularly irate and frustrated at this latest turn of events. He lashed out at those around him, somehow forgetting that it was he himself who had chosen Becket as his Archbishop of Canterbury against his erstwhile friend’s own advice. He bellowed something to the effect of, ‘What sluggards, what cowards have I brought up in my court, who care nothing for their allegiance to their lord?’ The exact wording of the next sentence, the one that sealed Thomas Becket’s fate, is disputed. It appears to have been on the lines of, ‘Have I no friend who will rid me of this upstart priest?’ or, ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ or perhaps, ‘Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?’

  Whatever the precise phrasing, four knights who happened to be within earshot clearly felt they understood the king’s meaning and rode off for the coast to board a boat to Kent. They entered Canterbury Cathedral on the night of 29 December 1170, just four days after the excommunications had taken place. Becket was standing by the high altar. It appears that initially the knights intended to do no more than arrest the archbishop, but when he did not yield to them and instead clung unto the altar, they set about him, hacking at his head until his skull was split open.

  It is often said that Henry II’s outburst was in no way intended to intimate that he wanted Becket killed but had arisen from his exasperation with the cleric and was merely rhetorical. To be fair to the monarch, he was a great advocate for the rule of law and the concept of trail by jury, and although he doubtless considered himself above the law, he is unlikely to have wanted
his former friend murdered. He certainly repented of his part in the crime afterwards. As soon as he heard of it, he put on sackcloth and ashes, and fasted for three days.

  However the king meant his words to be understood, the fallout from them has been dramatic and long-lasting. Ironically, the murder had the effect of making the Church stronger and the king weaker. The people declared Becket a saint, even before the pope managed it (in 1173), and the outrage at the Church courts was washed away by a wave of sympathy. The following year, in a very public show of contrition, Henry walked barefoot to Thomas’ shrine at Canterbury Cathedral, allowing himself to be flogged by monks en route.

  Canterbury became a major place of pilgrimage, almost on a par with Santiago de Compostela. As a result, the Kentish city became extremely wealthy, with the saint’s shrine morphing into a treasure trove of gems and objects made of precious metals. Some historians have posited that, over 350 years later, it was this ostentatious display of wealth that persuaded the perennially acquisitive Henry VIII that there was much to be said for closing down all the monasteries, helping himself to their riches, and setting up the Church of England as a rival to the Catholic Church.

  Furthermore, ten months after the killing, Henry took himself off to Ireland (with a reported 400 ships, 500 knights and 4,000 men-at-arms) in a bid to escape some of the opprobrium aimed at him both by his people and the pope. Adding Ireland to his kingdom had always been on Henry’s agenda, but the fallout from the murder meant it suddenly became very convenient to start pursuing that end. While he was in the country, several Irish princes came to pledge their loyalty to him at Cashel. So began Britain’s long, bloody and bitter involvement in Ireland, which continues today and will doubtless do so until the entire island becomes Irish once more. And almost certainly after that, too.