|
Laura Bell (courtesan)
Laura Eliza Jane Seymour Bell (1829–1894, married name Thistlethwayte) was an Irish-born courtesan of Victorian England. She was most notorious for the Nepalese Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana reputedly spending £250,000 on her. She later experienced a religious conversion and became a revivalist preacher on morality. Early life Bell was born in Glenavy, Co. Antrim. After an unsupervised childhood, she left home to work a shop assistant in Belfast. She earned extra money by prostitution. She later moved to Dublin where she became a successful courtesan. Bell is rumored to have had an affair with Dr William Wilde, father of Oscar Wilde. London Around 1849 Bell moved to London, where she became known as ''The Queen of London Whoredom''. Rich noblemen and dukes were entertained by Bell. She often drove in Hyde Park in a gilt carriage drawn by two white horses. It was here she met the Nepalese Prime Minister Jung Bahadur Rana. Rana installed Bell in a luxury house in Wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Buckner (artist)
Richard Buckner (born Woolwich, London, 25 October 1812; died 12 August 1883), was an English portrait painter. Origins He was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Buckner (1772-1837), of Whyke House, Rumboldswhyke, Chichester, Royal Regiment of Artillery and a Deputy Lieutenant of Sussex, (a son of Admiral Charles Buckner), by his wife Mary Marsh Pierce. Career Buckner first worked in a studio in Whyke House, his family home. After serving in the army in 1832 and 1833 as a Second Lieutenant in The King's Royal Rifle Corps he studied painting under Giovanni Battista Cassevari in Rome. While in Rome Buckner gave advice to Frederick (Lord) Leighton, later PRA, when he was starting his career. Buckner lived in and had his studio in Cleveland Row, opposite St James's Palace, in London. He first painted miniatures but then changed to painting larger portraits. He painted Italian genre subjects and later elegant and fashionable Victorian ladies. He first sent work to galler ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wilton Crescent
Wilton Crescent is a street in central London, comprising a sweeping elegant terrace of Georgian houses and the private communal gardens that the semi-circle looks out upon. The houses were built in the early 19th century and are now Grade II listed buildings. The street is the northern projection of Belgravia and is often taken to fall into the category of London's garden squares. It is notable for its affluent and politically important list of residents, present and historic, and it today includes the High Commission of Singapore and equivalent Embassy of Luxembourg. Its closest public transit link is Hyde Park Corner tube station, beyond a cluster of affluent mews and St Paul's Knightsbridge (built in 1843). Overview Wilton Crescent was created by Thomas Cundy II, the Grosvenor family estate surveyor, and was drawn up with the original 1821 Wyatt plan for Belgravia. It was named at the time of Thomas Egerton, 2nd Earl of Wilton, second son of Robert Grosvenor, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not the head of state, but rather the head of government, serving under either a monarch in a democratic constitutional monarchy or under a president in a republican form of government. In parliamentary systems fashioned after the Westminster system, the prime minister is the presiding and actual head of government and head/owner of the executive power. In such systems, the head of state or their official representative (e.g., monarch, president, governor-general) usually holds a largely ceremonial position, although often with reserve powers. Under some presidential systems, such as South Korea and Peru, the prime minister is the leader or most senior member of the cabinet, not the head of government. In many systems, the prime minister ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the northeast and east, and the Irish Sea to the south. It also contains more than 790 islands, principally in the archipelagos of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles. Most of the population, including the capital Edinburgh, is concentrated in the Central Belt—the plain between the Scottish Highlands and the Southern Uplands—in the Scottish Lowlands. Scotland is divided into 32 administrative subdivisions or local authorities, known as council areas. Glasgow City is the largest council area in terms of population, with Highland being the largest in terms of area. Limited self-governing power, covering matters such as education, social services and roads and transportation, is devolved from the Scott ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ross-shire
Ross-shire (; gd, Siorrachd Rois) is a historic county in the Scottish Highlands. The county borders Sutherland to the north and Inverness-shire to the south, as well as having a complex border with Cromartyshire – a county consisting of numerous enclaves or exclaves scattered throughout Ross-shire's territory. Ross-shire includes most of Ross along with Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Dingwall is the traditional county town. The area of Ross-shire is based on that of the historic province of Ross, but with the exclusion of the many enclaves that form Cromartyshire. For shreival purposes the area was first separated from the authority of the sheriff of Inverness by Act of Parliament during the reign of King James IV, the sheriff to sit at Tain or Dingwall. Sheriffs were seldom appointed, and further acts of 1649 and 1661 restated its separation from Inverness. The 1661 act also clarified the area encompassed, based on the pre-Reformation Diocese of Ross. Sir George ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grosvenor Square
Grosvenor Square is a large garden square in the Mayfair district of London. It is the centrepiece of the Mayfair property of the Duke of Westminster, and takes its name from the duke's surname "Grosvenor". It was developed for fashionable residences in the 18th century. In the 20th it had an American and Canadian diplomatic presence, and currently is mixed use, commercial. History Sir Richard Grosvenor obtained a licence to develop Grosvenor Square and the surrounding streets in 1710, and development took place between 1725 and 1731. The land was sold in individual plots, with 30 different builders or partnerships taking a lease; about half of these had become bankrupt by 1738. Grosvenor Square was one of the three or four most fashionable residential addresses in London from its construction until the Second World War, with numerous leading members of the aristocracy in residence. The early houses were generally of five or seven bays, with basement, three main stories a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FreeBMD
FreeBMD is a UK-based charitable organisation and website founded in 1998, and established as charity in 2003 to create a free transcription of the indexes to Births, Marriages and Deaths (BMD) for England and Wales from 1837 to 1983. It also provides on-line access to images of the pages of the BMD indexes. Since 2014 FreeBMD has been part of Free UK Genealogy. History FreeBMD was founded in 1998 by Ben Laurie, Graham Hart and Camilla Von Massenbach, with the intention of creating a searchable version of the General Register Office indexes of England and Wales. The three founders were joined in 1999 by Dave Mayall. The project became a registered charity in 2003. In 2005, FreeBMD absorbed the formerly separate, but closely allied, projects FreeCEN and FreeREG, bringing all three projects under a single trustee body, while retaining autonomous day-to-day management. In 2014, the name was changed to Free UK Genealogy, to better reflect their aims. In 2016, it became a Charitable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St George Hanover Square
St George Hanover Square was a civil parish created in 1724 in the Liberty of Westminster, Middlesex, which was later part of the metropolitan area of London, England. The creation of the parish accompanied the building of St George's, Hanover Square, constructed by the Commission for Building Fifty New Churches to meet the demands of a growing population. The parish was formed from part of the quite early medieval (in legal parlance called ancient) parish of Saint Martin in the Fields in the consequent Liberty of Westminster, probably one parish at the time of the Norman conquest, and in the hundred of Ossulstone. It included some of the most fashionable areas of what later became the West End of London, including Belgravia and Mayfair. Civil parish administration, known as a select vestry, was dominated by members of the nobility and landed gentry until the parish adopted the Vestries Act 1831. The vestry was reformed again in 1855 by the Metropolis Management Act. In 1889 t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
General Register Office
General Register Office or General Registry Office (GRO) is the name given to the civil registry in the United Kingdom, many other Commonwealth nations and Ireland. The GRO is the government agency responsible for the recording of vital records such as births, deaths, and marriages (or BDM), which may also include adoptions, stillbirths, civil unions, etc., and historically, sometimes included records relating to deeds and other property transactions. The director of a General Register Office is often titled Registrar General or Registrar-General. By country Australia The Australian states and territories have similar registries for birth, death and marriage, although their histories differ. These agencies are usually subordinate to the state Attorney-General Department or Department of Justice. The Australian Bureau of Statistics is responsible for collating the statistics based on these records. ACT: Until 1930, records were registered in the New South Wales Registry of B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oxford Dictionary Of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September 2004 in 60 volumes and online, with 50,113 biographical articles covering 54,922 lives. First series Hoping to emulate national biographical collections published elsewhere in Europe, such as the '' Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie'' (1875), in 1882 the publisher George Smith (1824–1901), of Smith, Elder & Co., planned a universal dictionary that would include biographical entries on individuals from world history. He approached Leslie Stephen, then editor of the ''Cornhill Magazine'', owned by Smith, to become the editor. Stephen persuaded Smith that the work should focus only on subjects from the United Kingdom and its present and former colonies. An early working title was the ''Biographia Britannica'', the name of an earlier eightee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sepoy Mutiny
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the Company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858., , and On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859. Its name is contested, and it is variously described as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Indian Mutiny
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the Company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858., , and On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859. Its name is contested, and it is variously described as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
