British History

The desk of the writer Dr Samuel Johnson is to be returned to his former London home for the first time in more than 260 years.

Except, in a strange twist, its owner is now uncertain whether it really is the desk of the famous 18th Century dictionary author.

It's been suggested that despite many years of being treated as a literary relic, it could have been part of a Victorian hustle to make money.

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What's now in dispute is the fate of the desk on which he wrote the dictionary when he was living in Gough Square, in a house which is now a museum to his memory.

Since the 19th Century the wooden desk has been in Pembroke College Oxford - and the college is lending this prized possession to the Dr Johnson House museum.

But when Lynda Mugglestone, professor of the history of English at the college, began to check out the provenance of the desk, there were some unexpected questions.

"The real story is that we don't quite know if it's the real desk," she says.

It had come to the college through a clergyman who had been close to Dr Johnson's god daughter, Elizabeth Ann Lowe, and her sister. A plaque was attached to signify its historic importance.

But the puzzle is whether those sisters ever really had the desk or whether they used their literary connection as a way of guilt-tripping some famous writers of their era for money.

Prof Mugglestone says that as the centenary of Johnson's dictionary was being marked in 1855, the Lowe sisters began writing asking for cash, describing themselves as in penury and with nothing left but a desk which they said had been left to them by the great writer.

They were "living in poverty" in Deptford in south London, says Prof Mugglestone, and they made clear that "donations were welcome".

Writers such as Thomas Carlyle and Charles Dickens, who had just written Hard Times, began to fund raise for the sisters.

Literary London was mobilised to help the sisters who were the surviving connections to Dr Johnson. The desk became part of that story.

Dickens wrote of the sisters being in "great poverty, but undemonstrative and uncomplaining, though very old - with nothing to speak of in the wide world, but the plain fir desk on which Johnson wrote his English Dictionary".

Such pleas from Dickens helped to raise large donations for the sisters, with the desk being saved as a "proud possession to the English nation".

But Celine Luppo McDaid, director of the Dr Johnson House, says it is now seems unclear whether this desk was actually Johnson's.

The case for it being authentic, she says, is that the sisters could have been thinking: "We've sold everything else, but we still have this treasured desk, it's the last thing we have."

Or else it might have been a chance to turn a bit of spare furniture into a financial lifeline.

"They might have seen an opportunity and decided that the knackered old desk in the corner was 'Johnson's desk'," says the museum director Ms McDaid.

Eighty years on: the story of D-Day as it unfolds, using rediscovered testimonies of those who were there, on all sides.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15875398

The FBI is investigating the sale to US buyers of what are suspected to be hundreds of treasures from the British Museum.

The BBC understands the US law enforcement agency has also assisted with the return of 268 items, which the museum claims belong to it, that were sold to a collector in Washington DC.

The British Museum announced last year that ancient gems, jewellery and other items from its collection, were missing, stolen or damaged.

One buyer, based in New Orleans, told the BBC an FBI agent had emailed him asking for information about two pieces he had bought on eBay.

The FBI agent said they were assisting the Metropolitan Police with investigating missing or stolen items from the museum.

The buyer has said he is no longer in possession of either gem and does not believe they have been located by authorities. The FBI did not request further information from him.

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Neither the FBI agent, the museum or British police followed up with him - said Mr Birbiglia - so the two gems have not yet been tracked down by the authorities.

“The whole thing just seemed like they [the FBI] were blowing it off,” he said. “He [the agent] didn't try very hard.”

The BBC understands the FBI has also assisted with the investigation of 268 items in the Washington DC area that were sold by the same seller.

But between 1588 and 1960 there was a tax on physical playing cards - and in 1765 a process was introduced to make sure all vendors and makers would stump up the duty.

Makers had to supply the tax office with paper to match their other cards, and the tax office - also known as the stamp office - would print the ace of spades using engraved metal plates, a printing technology that was expensive and not widely available.

The maker would then buy the printed aces from the stamp office - thereby paying the tax. In order to make it more difficult to forge these aces, more and more elaborate designs were used.

Richard Harding, a licensed card-maker with shops in Oxford Street and Grosvenor Square, carried on the manufacturing and selling of playing cards.

He did a roaring trade - but made very few demands of the stamp office.

A Mr John Hockey from the stamp office was put on the case. He started by buying six packs of playing cards from Harding's business and finding all of the aces were forged.

Obviously not one to leave things to chance, he continued to repeat his purchases until he had 90 packs of playing cards. All the aces of spades were forgeries.

The habits of this man, with his apparently insatiable desire for packs of cards, must have roused the suspicions of Harding for when his businesses and home were raided - not one forgery was found.

The dogged men from the stamp office were not about to give up and some of Harding's acquaintances were also paid a visit.

A Mr Skelton leased part of a building in his rear yard to Harding, where Harding would, in the words of the prosecution, "carry on his nefarious business".

Mr Skelton denied any knowledge of Harding's nefarious business. This, however, was cast into doubt when 2,000 aces of spades were found in his home.

More were found at his daughter's house, hidden in a basket of "foul linen".

Investigators also discovered, buried about a foot beneath the earth at the bottom of his yard, printing plates. In the privy, they found more.

They were for the aces of spades.

During the trial, John Hockey, the man who bought 90 packs of cards from Harding, told the Old Bailey he had paid the standard market rate - Harding wasn't therefore getting away with shoddy copies by selling them cheap.

So how had he managed to print aces of spades convincing enough they didn't raise the alarm with ordinary buyers?

It emerged he paid for an associate, a stone-seal engraver called Hugh Leadbetter, to take copper-engraving lessons.

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Harding left his defence to his counsel, and called seven witnesses who gave him a good character.

Yet on 21 September 1805 he was found guilty and sentenced to death. Two months later, he was hanged.

His remains were at St George Hanover Square Burial Ground in Bayswater until 12 March 1969, when he - and others - were removed to Lambeth and cremated.

Should the term “Anglo-Saxon” be dropped because it’s been adopted by racists?

People online are angry because a history journal has dropped “Anglo-Saxon” from its title. Critics say it is pandering to American academics who are unduly worried about the term being used by white supremacists. The journal says that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s part of an ongoing debate about whether “Anglo Saxon” is useful and appropriate. How did the argument start? Where did the term actually come from? And how has it been used in modern times to talk about race?

One of the guests has a YouTube video on the topic.

A scratched wooden door found by chance at the top of a medieval turret has been revealed to be an “astonishing” graffiti-covered relic from the French revolutionary wars, including an carving that could be a fantasy of Napoleon Bonaparte being hanged.

Over 50 individual graffiti carvings were chiselled into the door in the 1790s by bored English soldiers stationed at Dover Castle in Kent, when Britain was at war with France in the wake of the French Revolution.

They include a detailed carving of a sailing ship, an elaborate stylised cross and nine individual scenes of figures being hanged – one of whom is wearing a bicorn hat.

The simple plank door was first discovered several years ago at the top of St John’s tower, which for more than a century had been impossible to access without climbing a ladder to the base of a spiral staircase. At the time, however, it was covered in thick layers of paint that obscured many of its markings.

It was only when it was recently removed for conservation, requiring the paint to be carefully taken off, that the full details of the door’s carvings came to light.

“We had had glimpses of what might be on it, but when it was stripped back, the totality of it was quite amazing,” said Paul Pattison, senior properties historian at English Heritage, which manages the castle.

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“What makes this door such an extraordinary object is that it is a rare and precious example of the ordinary person making their mark; whether that be simply for the purpose of killing time, or wanting to be remembered.”

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The nine hangings are clearly by different hands, said Pattison, pointing to a preoccupation of the soldiers with public executions, which would have been common at the time. The detail of one, which shows the figure wearing a bicorn hat, has led to intriguing speculation that it could depict a fantasy of a defeated Napoleon being hanged. (In fact the emperor would die in exile in 1821, reportedly of stomach cancer.)

“It’s obviously a man in uniform – so this is a military man,” said Pattison, adding that only officers wore the distinctive hat.

While Pattison remains to be convinced beyond doubt that it is intended to be the French military leader, “it almost certainly depicts a particular individual being hung – and they obviously were an officer, which is quite unusual”.

Fact check

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14362366

Her new book, Chamber Divers, is about research conducted by scientists at UCL [University College London] before and during World War II — including protocols for operating the miniature submarines used on scouting missions in advance of D-Day.

"These tiny subs had a smaller gas volume, which made the rules of breathing physiology even more time critical," Lance explains. "The scientists ... did this experiment by just putting themselves in a tank, closing the door and waiting to see how long they could physically handle the amount of carbon dioxide in there before they ended up with migraines and projectile vomiting."

Lance notes that UCL scientists subjected themselves to extremes that would be considered "wildly unethical and illegal today." Some sustained serious injuries — including seizures and broken spines — in the hyperbaric chamber.

"One of them ... dislocated her jaw five times in the same dive," Lance says. But, she adds, "they were doing it because they were in this context of the Blitz and the bombings and the horrors of World War II happening around them."