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Clerkenwell Gaol
Coldbath Fields Prison, also formerly known as the Middlesex House of Correction and Clerkenwell Gaol and informally known as the Steel, was a prison in the Mount Pleasant area of Clerkenwell, London. Founded in the reign of James I (1603–1625) it was completely rebuilt in 1794 and extended in 1850. It housed prisoners on short sentences of up to two years. Blocks emerged to segregate felons, misdemeanants and vagrants. History Coldbath Fields Prison (also known as the Middlesex House of Correction) was originally a prison run by local magistrates and where most prisoners served short sentences. Coldbath Fields also served as a debtor's prison. It took its name from Cold Bath Spring, a medicinal spring discovered in 1697. The prison housed men, women and children until 1850, when the women and children moved to Tothill Fields Bridewell in Victoria (Westminster) leaving only male offenders over the age of 17. Despite its aspirations to be more humanitarian (its redesign was by J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clerkenwell Prison
Clerkenwell (old) Prison, also known as the Clerkenwell House of Detention or Middlesex House of Detention was a prison in Clerkenwell, London, opened in 1847 and demolished in 1890. It held prisoners awaiting trial. It stood on Bowling Green Lane conveniently close to the Middlesex Sessions House, where prisoners would be tried, on Clerkenwell Green to the south. History The House of Detention was built on the site of two earlier prisons, the Clerkenwell Bridewell for convicted prisoners and the New Prison for those awaiting trial. The Bridewell closed in 1794 and its functions were taken over by the Coldbath Fields Prison at Mount Pleasant. The New Prison was rebuilt in 1818 and in 1847, at which time its name changed to the House of Detention. On 13 December 1867 its exercise yard was the target of a gunpowder explosion instigated by members of the Fenian Society in an attempt to aid the escape of Ricard O'Sullivan Burke, an arms supplier to the Fenians. The blast killed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Howard (prison Reformer)
John Howard FRS (2 September 1726 – 20 January 1790) was a philanthropist and early English prison reformer. Birth and early life Howard was born in North London, either in Hackney or Enfield. His father, also John, was a wealthy upholsterer at Smithfield Market in the city. His mother Ann Pettitt, or Cholmley, died when he was five years old, and, described as a "sickly child", he was sent to live at Cardington, Bedfordshire, some fifty miles from London, where his father owned property. His father, a strict disciplinarian with strong religious beliefs, sent the young John to a school in Hertford run by John Worsley. He went on from there to a dissenting academy run in London by John Eames. After school, John was apprenticed to a wholesale grocer to learn business methods, but he was unhappy. When his father died in 1742, he was left with a sizeable inheritance but no true vocation, a Calvinist faith and a quiet, serious disposition. Early travels In 1748, Howard left E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mount Pleasant Sorting Office
The Mount Pleasant Mail Centre (often shortened as Mount Pleasant, known internally as the Mount and officially known as the London Central Mail Centre) is a mail centre operated by Royal Mail in London, England. The site has previously operated as one of the largest sorting offices in the world. It is located in the London Borough of Islington, on the boundary with the London Borough of Camden. History The street called Mount Pleasant gained its name ironically in the 1730s after locals had begun to dump cinders and other refuse. The centre was officially opened on 30 August 1889 when the Post Office (Sites) Act (52 & 53 Vict. Ch. ccix) was passed by Parliament. It was built on the location of the former Coldbath Fields Prison that ceased to function in 1885. The original prison gate was incorporated into the Post Office building and not demolished until 1901. The remaining sections of the prison were demolished in 1929, when the new wing was built as an extension to the Lette ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post Office
A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional services, which vary by country. These include providing and accepting government forms (such as passport applications), and processing government services and fees (such as road tax, postal savings, or bank fees). The chief administrator of a post office is called a postmaster. Before the advent of postal codes and the post office, postal systems would route items to a specific post office for receipt or delivery. During the 19th century in the United States, this often led to smaller communities being renamed after their post offices, particularly after the Post Office Department began to require that post office names not be duplicated within a state. Name The term "post-office" has been in use since the 1650s, shortly after the legali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Penny Illustrated Paper And Illustrated Times
The ''Penny Illustrated Paper'' was a cheap ( 1d.) illustrated London weekly newspaper that ran from 1861 to 1913. Premises Illustrated weekly newspapers had been pioneered by the ''Illustrated London News'' (published from 1842, costing fivepence): its imitators included the ''Pictorial Times'' (1843–48), and – after the 1855 repeal of the Stamp Act – the ''Illustrated Times''. With the abolition of paper duty in 1861 it was possible to envisage an even cheaper mass-circulation illustrated weekly. History The first issue, 12 October 1861, announced itself confidently under the masthead "PENNY ILLUSTRATED PAPER: With All the News of the Week": "A new era opens upon the people. In producing a paper for the million, let us plainly say, we want be esteemed the friend of the people ... A new era is opened to us by the Repeal of the Paper Dutie The paper was apparently initially the charge of Ebenezer Farringtonbr>but the wife and sons of the recently deceased Her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cato Street Conspiracy
The Cato Street Conspiracy was a plot to murder all the British cabinet ministers and the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool in 1820. The name comes from the meeting place near Edgware Road in London. The police had an informer; the plotters fell into a police trap. Thirteen were arrested, while one policeman, Richard Smithers, was killed. Five conspirators were executed, and five others were transported to Australia. How widespread the Cato Street conspiracy was is uncertain. It was a time of unrest; rumours abounded. Malcolm Chase noted that "the London-Irish community and a number of trade societies, notably shoemakers, were prepared to lend support, while unrest and awareness of a planned rising were widespread in the industrial north and on Clydeside." Origins The conspirators were called the Spencean Philanthropists, a group taking their name from the British radical speaker Thomas Spence. The group was known for being a revolutionary organisation, involved in unrest and prop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Ackermann
Rudolph Ackermann (20 April 1764 in Schneeberg, Electorate of Saxony – 30 March 1834 in Finchley, London) was an Anglo-German bookseller, inventor, lithographer, publisher and businessman. Biography He attended the Latin school in Stollberg, but his wish to study at the university was made impossible by lack of financial means, and he therefore became a saddler like his father. He worked as a saddler and coach-builder in different German cities, moved from Dresden to Basel and Paris, and then, 23 years old, settled in London. He established himself in Long Acre, the centre of coach-making in London and close to the market at Covent Garden. His extraordinary business instinct, as well as his flair for design and talent for self-promotion, won him the £200 contract to design the ceremonial coach for the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare. After this he designed ''The Royal Sailor'', an 8-wheel omnibus that ran between Charing Cross, Greenwi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oakum
Oakum is a preparation of tarred fibre used to seal gaps. Its main traditional applications were in shipbuilding, for caulking or packing the joints of timbers in wooden vessels and the deck planking of iron and steel ships; in plumbing, for sealing joints in cast iron pipe; and in log cabins for chinking. In ship caulking, it was forced into the seams using a hammer and a caulking iron, then sealed into place with hot pitch. It is also referenced frequently as a medical supply for medieval surgeons, often used along with bandages for sealing wounds. History The word oakum derives from Middle English ', from Old English ', from ' ( separative and perfective prefix) + ' (akin to Old English ', 'comb')—literally 'off-combings'. Oakum was at one time recycled from old tarry ropes and cordage, which were painstakingly unravelled and reduced to fibre, termed "picking". The task of picking and preparation was a common occupation in prisons and workhouses, where the young or th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Mainwaring (English Politician)
William Mainwaring (6 Oct 1735 – 28 February 1821) was the MP for Middlesex from 1784 and chairman of the Middlesex and Westminster Quarter Sessions for a similar period.Jeremy Black; George III: America's Last King'; Yale University Press, 2006; He was the eldest son of Boulton Mainwaring of Isleworth, Middlesex and educated at Merchant Taylors' School (1744–52). He then entered Lincoln's Inn in 1754 to study law and was called to the bar in 1759. He was elected to serve as MP for Middlesex from 1784 to 1800. In the 1802 General election, he stood as candidate for Middlesex again was opposed by the radical Francis Burdett. Mainwaring had previously resisted Burdett's calls for an inquiry into prison abuses, particularly at Coldbath Fields Prison Coldbath Fields Prison, also formerly known as the Middlesex House of Correction and Clerkenwell Gaol and informally known as the Steel, was a prison in the Mount Pleasant area of Clerkenwell, London. Founded in the reign of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Francis Burdett
Sir Francis Burdett, 5th Baronet (25 January 1770 – 23 January 1844) was a British politician and Member of Parliament who gained notoriety as a proponent (in advance of the Chartists) of universal male suffrage, equal electoral districts, vote by ballot, and annual parliaments. His commitment to reform resulted in legal proceedings and brief confinement to the Tower of London. In his later years he appeared reconciled to the very limited provisions of the 1832 Reform Act. He was the godfather of Francisco Burdett O'Connor, one of the famed ''Libertadores'' of the Spanish American wars of independence. Family Sir Francis Burdett was the son of Francis Burdett and his wife Eleanor, daughter of William Jones of Ramsbury Manor, Wiltshire. He inherited the family baronetcy from his grandfather Sir Robert Burdett in 1797. From 1820 until his death, he lived at 25 St James's Place, London. Education and early life He was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxfo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Despard
Edward Marcus Despard (175121 February 1803), an Kingdom of Ireland, Irish officer in the service of the The Crown, British Crown, gained notoriety as a colonial administrator for refusing to recognise racial distinctions in law and, following his recall to London, as a Republicanism in the United Kingdom, republican conspirator. Despard's associations with the London Corresponding Society, the Society of United Irishmen, United Irishmen and United Britons led to his trial and execution in 1803 as the alleged ringleader of a plot to assassinate the George III, King. Ireland, and military service in the Caribbean Edward Despard was born in 1751 in Coolrain, Camross, County Laois, Queen's County, in the Kingdom of Ireland, the youngest of eight surviving children (six sons, two daughters) of William Despard, a protestant landowner of Huguenot descent, and Jane Despard (née Walsh). With neighboring gentry, his father and grandfather enlarged their estate by enclosure, enclosing "was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Merceron
Joseph Merceron (1764–1839) was a British businessman, property developer, parochial politician and magistrate notorious for his corrupt practices. Early life and family Joseph Merceron was born and raised in Brick Lane, Bethnal Green in the East End of London. His family were of prominent Huguenot stock; his grandfather was a refugee who migrated to London following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. His father James Merceron (1723–1780) was a former silk-weaver turned pawnbroker and slum landlord who held various offices in the then-new parish of St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green. Bethnal Green was run by an ‘open' (i.e. elected) vestry, which offered opportunities for political manipulation. Merceron was educated at Merchant Taylors' School in the City of London, following which he spent time working in his father's pawnshop and in a local lottery office. Career After the death of his father in 1780 Merceron became rent-collector for the family properties, subseque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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