For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

The Festival of Empire (12.05.11)

When I was young affixed to the classroom wall of my primary school was a giant map measuring 5 feet wide by 4 feet high. It depicted the world with each country picked out in a colour denoting its governance. Proud to be pink was the order of the day – stretching across the entire map – for pink-denoted countries belonging to the British Empire.

It was said by the English that the sun never set on its Empire, and Indians from the sub-continent were given to remark: That God didn’t trust the English in the dark. Little did we know it then but just after the Second World War it really was the remains of the day for Britain’s Empire and the sun was indeed setting – those little pink shapes would be changing colour one by one.

One hundred years ago on 12th May 1911 King George V opened The Festival of Empire at Crystal Palace, a rather self-congratulatory piece of theatre. “The Festival of Empire, Imperial Exhibition and Pageant of London: Crystal Palace” to give it its formal title was originally due to open in 1910, but his father King Edward VII after only nine years on the Throne managed to eat himself to death.

With a budget of £½ million, the Festival of Empire would stay open until 28th October 1911, giving visitors two main entertainments:

The Great Pageant of London and the Empire gave the Empire’s glorious development from the “Dawn of British History” to a Grand Imperial Finale, in which visitors from the Dominions joined with the English performers to provide a wonderful “living picture” illustrating the vastness of the British Empire. Upwards of 15,000 performers with music accompanying the scenes performed by a band of 50 and a chorus of 500. The Pageant gave visitors various scenes including The Dawn of British History; Roman London; King Alfred and London; the Danish Invasion; The Norman Conquest; Return of Richard I; Edward I; and The Days of Chivalry.

While the All-British Exhibition offered a cut-down version of The Great Exhibition devoted to British Arts and Industries. The following sections were among some of those that were represented: Applied Chemistry; Pianos; Mining; Engineering; Shipping; Transportation and Motive Power; Decoration and Furnishing; Arts and Crafts; Home Industries; Photography; British and Colonial Agriculture; Forestry; Fisheries; Sports; and Imperial Industries.

To reinforce the perception ion of Britain’s power and might the British Empire was constructed in miniature on the Palace grounds, complete with three-quarter-size replicas of the Parliament buildings of all the Commonwealth countries. These replicas, their exteriors architecturally complete to the smallest detail, were built of timber and plaster. They depicted the Parliament Building of the Union of South Africa, the Government Building of Newfoundland at St. Johns, the Parliament Building of New Zealand at Wellington, the Federal Government Building of Australia at Melbourne, and at a cost of over £70,000 the building of the Government of Canada. For tuppence ha’penny, a miniature railway could take the visitor to view a South African diamond mine, an Indian tea plantation, and a Canadian logging camp.

Unfortunately the British were celebrating the last gasps of the Empire, three years later the Great War would see a generation of young men die in the trenches, the Wall Street Crash would help destroy Britain’s wealthy families, and in 1936, the venue, Crystal Palace burnt to the ground.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Avoid idleness and intemperance (22.04.11)

In 1837 a young woman found herself the monarch of her country, she was to remain Queen during an unprecedented time of burgeoning industry and wealth creation, giving her name to the 64 years she reigned and a time Britain was at its zenith of influence and power.

That same year a novel was printed which would change a country’s attitude to the poorest and venerable, that novel was the second major work to be published by Charles Dickens.

Charles Dickens was no stranger to poverty. In 1823 when his father lost his job and was sent to Marshalsea debtor’s prison 11-year-old Charles worked in a blacking factory pasting labels on shoe polish bottled for six shillings a week. At that time he also certainly worked alongside children from the workhouse, it was an experience that would remain with him all his life and be the subject of his novel Oliver Twist.

In 1834 a Poor Law was enacted, with the sole purpose of discouraging claiming relief in times of poverty and forcing individuals to take work offered to them however low the pay. Welfare assistance was only available inside the workhouse, once admitted the unfortunate inmates would be deloused and forced to wear uniforms, families were broken up and if individuals were capable of working they would be sent to labour for unscrupulous employers. The very young, ill or old who were unable to produce an income were in most cases refused admission to the workhouse and starved to death.

In a fascinating piece of research, Dr Ruth Richardson has established the source material for Oliver Twist which tells the story of the illegitimate orphan Oliver who endures a miserable time at the workhouse and during his parish apprenticeship with an undertaker, before running away and being taken in by a gang of juvenile pickpockets.

It was known that Charles Dickens lived in a certain Norfolk Street twice in his early life for a period of four years. Dr Richardson has established that Norfolk Street once was the southern continuation of Cleveland Street which exists today and that Dickens lived only nine doors away from the Cleveland Street workhouse ending years of speculation by historians to the exact location of Dickens’s childhood home.

Cleveland Street Workhouse was constructed in about 1780 on what at that time was a burial ground. Starting life as the parish workhouse for St. Paul’s, Covent Garden in 1836 it functioned as an infirmary, maternity unit, insane asylum or a place to deposit those suffering from highly contagious diseases.

Even by workhouse standards 44 Cleveland Street was dreadful, a contemporary account by Dr Joseph Rogers the chief medical officer at the workhouse from 1856-68, reported: a laundry in the basement filling the dining hall with foul-smelling steam; carpets regularly beaten directly outside the men’s infirmary; the nursery both damp and overcrowded; “nursing” provided only by elderly female inmates, many of whom were apparently habitually drunk; the brutal indifference of the Guardians of the workhouse; the “dead house” adjoins the main structure. This led him to campaign for better standards in the medical care available to workhouse inhabitants.

After the Poor Law was reformed the Cleveland Street Workhouse passed first into the control of the Central London Sick Asylums District, then to the Middlesex Hospital and thence to the University College London Hospital complex. Closing in 2006 when UCLH moved all their services onto a single unified site.

The building is believed to be London’s only existing purpose-built Georgian workhouse, a rare example of social engineering from the 19th century; now after a five-year-long campaign the most famous workhouse in the world has been saved thanks to its Grade II listing.

Without it would Charles Dickens have written so passionately his most successful novel and then spent a lifetime campaigning for better welfare to be given to the poor? Now 44 Cleveland Street has been given a Heritage listing we have an opportunity to convert this rare Georgian building into flats whilst keeping its integrity, and use some of that income to provide a teaching and resource centre at the very heart of social and welfare reform that has benefitted us all today.

In an echo of Dachau with its sign “arbeit macht frei” (works brings freedom), above the gates of the Cleveland Street Workhouse was a statute of an old man pointing to the words: “Avoid idleness and intemperance”, as with Dachau, 22 Cleveland Street’s importance to our lives should not be forgotten.