This summer the British Library has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of the official opening of its St Pancras building.  One of the experts responsible for its construction was Anthony Stevens who died on 2 May 2018 at the age of 87.  His daughter Lexy has written this account of his life so that we can pay tribute to his work.

The British Library at St Pancras © Arup

Anthony Stevens was born to parents Edward Cecil and Gladys on 28 November 1930 at Wharncliffe Gardens in north-west London.  With his younger sister Betty, he spent his early childhood growing up in St John’s Wood.  When war broke out the family moved out to Hertfordshire, where he attended Watford Grammar School for Boys.
 
University education was not a possibility for him, so on leaving school aged 16, Tony initially worked as a draftsman for British Rail at Watford and then at Euston.  Inspired by the skills of his railway colleagues, he studied at night school for a civil engineering Higher National Certificate.  In 1955 he started work as a Chartered Engineer for Sir William Halcrow, and then joined Arup in 1958. He went on to become a Fellow of both the Institution of Civil Engineers and the Institution of Structural Engineers.

Anthony Stevens – photo courtesy of Lexy Stevens

 Tony took over the structural design of the Barbican Estate in the early 1960s and led the group that developed the design for the Barbican Arts Centre. With its location close to the previously-constructed tall residential tower blocks, it was necessary to limit ground movements to avoid damage to their foundations.  The Arup group designed a thick diaphragm wall, supported below by stiff props built inside tunnels. 

  The Barbican Arts Centre © Daniel Imade/Arup

The Barbican Arts Centre received the Institution of Structural Engineer’s Special Award in 1981, acknowledging “the importance of ground engineering works in the successful construction of works of structural engineering”.

   Anthony Stevens receiving the Special Award to Ove Arup and Partners for the Barbican Arts Centre – from The Structural Engineer vol. 60A No. 3 (March 1982)
 
His work on the Barbican made the new British Library at St Pancras a natural follow-up project for Tony.   He and colleagues decided that a design life of 500 years for certain structural elements of the building would not be unreasonable.  The book storage was planned in four basements with an overall depth of 25m, making this the largest civilian excavation in London.  Advanced analytical techniques showed only limited effects to surrounding properties, including St Pancras Station and the London Underground tunnels.  Techniques devised for the Barbican and British Library projects remain common practice. Tony was proud to learn that the British Library had been granted Grade I listing in 2015.

Construction of the British Library at St Pancras © Arup

   Construction of the British Library at St Pancras © Arup

  Construction of the British Library at St Pancras © Arup

  Construction of the British Library at St Pancras © Arup

At 62, Tony retired so that he could fulfil a long-held ambition. He studied for a degree at the Open University, attaining Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Sciences and Master of Mathematics, both with First Class Honours. Interviewed by a local newspaper, he said:
"Everybody can do it if they are determined to do the work, but there's quite a lot to do - at least 20 hours a week. People were amazed that I was ready to do it. During my career, there was quite a lot of maths in structural engineering, but I never really understood it. It was ever so interesting - I was finding out about a lot of things I had been taking for granted."

Tony combined an understanding of structure, materials, mathematics (despite his quote in the local paper!), and physics in order to solve problems from first principles, without having the benefit of today’s computers.  He was a leader with responsibilities for some of Arup’s most technically demanding projects, and set high standards. Everybody who worked with him will remember his support and advice, always given with a touch of humour.
 
Lexy Stevens
Architect, Tony’s daughter
with Peter Evans, who led the engineering of the British Library Completion Phase, containing the King’s Library, when Tony retired in 1992. 

Further reading:
A Stevens, B O Corbett, and A J Steele, ‘Barbican Arts Centre: the design and construction of the substructure’ in The Structural Engineer Vol. 55 No. 11 (November 1977).
The Structural Engineer vol. 60A No. 3 (March 1982).
P J Ryalls, R Cather, and A Stevens, ‘Aspects of design for durability at the British Library’ in Ravindra K Dhir and Jeffrey W Green (eds.), Protection of Concrete – Proceedings of the International Conference held at the University of Dundee 11-13 September 1990 (1990).

 

On a recent visit to the Green Howards Museum in Richmond Yorkshire, I was particularly taken with an article on display from the regimental magazine for 1895.  It was a first-hand account of the Crimean War by a soldier’s wife.  I found a copy in the British Library and it makes fascinating reading.

'A hot night in the Batteries'. Soldiers loading and firing cannons, during the Crimean War – from William Simpson and E Walker, The Seat of War in the East (London, 1855-1856) Images Online

Margaret Kerwin’s story was published in “Ours” – The Green Howards’ Gazette in 1895.  Margaret was the wife of Private John Kerwin of the 19th Regiment of Foot.  John was born in Carlow Ireland and he had enlisted in the British Army in February 1843 at the age of 20.  His first overseas posting was to North America where he served for nearly three years.

On 28 March 1854 Britain and France declared war on Russia. In April, the soldiers of the 19th Regiment who were stationed at the Tower of London were ordered to the Crimea.  People waved their handkerchiefs and threw oranges at the cheering soldiers as they left the Tower.  Margaret and fourteen other women went with the men on their journey.

Having sailed to Scutari, the regiment moved to Varna and then marched on foot to Devna.  Margaret bought a washing tub and carried it on her head with her cooking equipment inside.  She also carried a water bottle and a haversack with biscuits.  As they marched, men were overcome by the heat, and Margaret was kept busy providing them with drink.  In camp she was given the job of washing the clothes of 101 men, standing in a stream for twelve hours a day for very little payment.

Cholera and ‘black fever’ struck, killing large numbers of men.  Margaret fell seriously ill but her husband John had to leave her to fight in the Battle of Alma.  She was taken to the hospital at Varna where she received word that John had survived with just a slight wound.  Margaret refused to be sent back to England, and when she eventually recovered she was appointed as nurse at the hospital.

When the hospital was disbanded, Margaret sailed to Balaclava where she was reunited with John.  Shortly afterwards, the couple were ordered up to the front.  Margaret had a narrow escape when four shells exploded in her tent as she was on her knees ironing, her pet goat lying beside her.  A dozen shirts she was washing for Mr Beans were riddled with holes.

In November 1854, Margaret saw the Battle of Inkerman from Cathcart’s Hill.  She then had another brush with death when a Russian pistol held by a British sergeant went off unexpectedly and knocked the bonnet off her head.  Margaret was stunned but unharmed.

Having survived the Crimean campaign, John Kerwin went on to serve for seven years in India.  He was discharged from the Army in 1864 on a pension of 1s ½d, suffering from rheumatism.  John and Margaret returned to Carlow and lived to old age.  Her account of her experiences given in the 1890s ends: ‘If I was young to-morrow, I would take the same travels, but I would be a little wiser’.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
“Ours” – The Green Howards’ Gazette Vol. III No. 25 (April 1895,) pp. 94-96.
Army discharge papers for Private John Kerwin (or Kirwin) No. 1737 can be accessed through findmypast.

 Green Howards Museum

In 1930, Australian politician Sir Joseph Carruthers published Captain James Cook R.N., 150 Years After.  Despite being riddled with inaccuracies and overstatements the book was well received by reviewers and included a foreword by former Australian Prime Minister William ‘Billy’ Hughes.  Amongst other claims, Carruthers posits that: the spread of disease by Europeans had little to do with the devastation wrought on Pacific Islanders; that Cook diligently respected the rights of Indigenous peoples; and that he has a claim to have started building Britain’s Empire in the Pacific.

  Sir Joseph Carruthers  Photo: Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW - Call no PXE 1104 /1/ 7.

Here are some of Carruthers’ claims regarding Cook and Australia, and what’s wrong with them.

1. Australia is the Great Southern Continent Cook was searching for

It is commonly believed that Cook was tasked with ‘discovering’ Australia.  Carruthers had no small part in establishing this myth, using the fact that Cook was issued with secret Admiralty orders to search for the fabled ‘great southern continent’; however, this was not Australia.  The Admiralty’s secret orders instructed Cook to search southward of Tahiti between 40 and 35 degrees latitude ‘until you discover it, or fall in with the Eastern side of the Land discover’d by Tasman and now called New Zeland’ (sic).  The great southern continent was expected to be east of New Zealand.

2. Cook Discovered Australia

Carruthers also bolstered the claim that Cook discovered Australia based on an interesting definition of discovery:

‘Captain Cook is the real discoverer of Australia in the sense that he stands alone as the one man who made good his discovery and founded an indisputable title to possession for the British race.  No new fact was needed to prove that’.

It is a perception that downplays the Dutch, Spanish and other English sailors (to name but a few) who sighted and even landed on Australia’s shores before Cook; and more importantly denies the fact that the continent was already populated by the Indigenous peoples, estimated to have arrived there over 60,000 years ago.

3. Cook was an example to the Union movement

Carruthers was writing in the wake of the Great Depression, when the Union movement was in full swing.  In his book he took the opportunity to advise that:

‘It is just as well in these days, when the Union wage in Australia and America varies from one pound to three pounds per day, to remember that the greatest discoverer and navigator of all time did his job magnificently on ‘five bob’ a day and never made a murmur about his pay’.

4. Cook’s Divine Grace

Cook as a man of destiny is a recurring motif in many books.  For Sir Joseph, Cook was ordained to land in Australia under divine providence. His book contains many biblical allusions and calls to God.  Perhaps most bizarrely though, he recounts that when Cook’s father ‘went to live in Yorkshire, the grandmother said to him: “God send you grace.” At his new home he [Cook’s father] met his future wife and her name was Grace’.  Thus, for Carruthers, Grandma Cook’s prayer was fulfilled.

Peter Hooker
PhD candidate with the University of Newcastle (Australia)

Further reading:
Carruthers, Joseph and Hogan, Michael, 2005 A Lifetime in Conservative Politics: Political Memoirs of Sir Joseph Carruthers 1856-1932. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press
Carruthers, Sir Joseph 1930. Captain James Cook, R.N., One Hundred and Fifty Years After, London: John Murray.
Ward, John M. Carruthers, Sir Joseph Hector (1856–1932) Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 7, (MUP), 1979.

 

Visit our exhibition James Cook: The Voyages
Open until 28 August 2018

A penny dreadful account of  James Cook’s boyhood titled The Adventures and Vicissitudes of Captain Cook, offers an unusual example of 19th-century literature concerning this figure.  Published in 20 parts from 1 November 1869, the author of the account remained anonymous, but its publisher was E. Harrison, known for his “sensational fiction” and creation of cheap weekly periodicals aimed at children and adults.  Each part opened with a striking illustration, often of the young figure of Cook embroiled in a physical struggle or in the process of escaping danger.

The Adventures and Vicissitudes of Captain Cook, Mariner. Showing how by Honesty, Truth, and Perseverance, a Poor, Friendless Orphan Boy became a Great Man.  Beautifully illustrated (London: E. Harrison, 1870) available online

This work is notable for the inaccuracies and embellishments in its description of Cook’s childhood.  Though it is not acknowledged as fictitious in the volume itself, this may have been presumed by the readership.

The story begins with James Cook at the age of ten, living in the village of Marton with his sick and widowed mother.  While this was the correct location of the real Cook’s birth, on 27 October 1728, at the age of eight his family had moved to Great Ayton.  His parents in the Adventures are named as James and Mary Cook, and his father had died while working for a Farmer Gripman.  In reality Cook’s mother was named Grace.  James Cook Senior worked for a Mr Mewburn in Marton and a Mr Thomas Skottowe on Ayton and he was still very much alive at this stage in the younger Cook’s life.

A key plot point of the early chapters of the volume is the death of Cook’s ailing widowed mother, leaving him behind as an orphan with no siblings.  The real Cook was the second of eight children, four of whom died young.  Through this constructed context the series introduced the 19th-century literary trope of the impoverished orphan.  By opening the fictional story of his life in this manner the events that followed could address Cook going out into the world alone and navigating its trials and tribulations.

The events that ensued are filled with action and adventure, childhood companions both kind like Ichabod ‘Ikey’ Mangles, and cruel like Octavius Challoner.  Mysterious strangers act as defenders and draw the hero into new environments.  Together they guide the fictional Cook to his ultimate purpose and allow him to display his moral worth.  His values of honesty and kindness are always rewarded.

While connections to the facts of Cook’s early life are few, these tales create an origin story for the idealised vision of the James Cook that had become well-known in juvenile literature of this period.  In the final scene, as the vessel enters Whitby harbour, where the real Cook learnt his trade and his ships like the Endeavour and Resolution were built, the writer states ‘that with honesty and integrity for a motto, the most unpromising commencement of life may have the brightest finish’.

Mary McMahon
AHRC CDP PhD Student, Royal Holloway, University of London, and the British Museum

Further reading:
Beaglehole, J. C. The Life of Captain James Cook (London: A. and C. Black, 1974).
The Adventures and Vicissitudes of Captain Cook, Mariner. Showing how by Honesty, Truth, and Perseverance, a Poor, Friendless Orphan Boy became a Great Man.  Beautifully illustrated (London: E. Harrison, 1870) - available online.

 

Visit our exhibition James Cook: The Voyages
Open until 28 August 2018

 

Captain Archibald Anderson was in command of the East India Company ship Nottingham when he disappeared in May 1790.  Accident?  Suicide?  Or something more sinister?

Archibald Anderson (c. 1751-1790) started his career as an apprentice in the Scottish coastal trade in the mid-1760s.  He joined the East India Company’s service as a midshipman in 1770.  By 1786 he had risen through the ranks to be appointed Captain of the Nottingham and in 1790 was returning to England from his second season in command of the vessel.

'East Indiaman' from William Clark Russel, Betwixt the Foreland (London,1889) BL flickr 

On 23 May 1790 the Nottingham arrived back in England at the Downs having sailed from Portsmouth in February 1789 for Madras and China.  The following morning the Captain's servants discovered that Anderson was not in his quarters, his clothes for the day were still laid out on his sofa, and he was nowhere to be found on board ship.

The Chief Mate George Max states in his journal:
“The servants missing Captain Anderson, a search was made throughout the ship not finding him, supposed he had fell overboard out of the Stern Gallery, as his clothes laid all on the sopha”.

A second ship’s journal tells a very similar story:
“Am. the Servants missing Capt. Anderson a first search was made thro the ship not finding himself found he had fell overboard in the Night out of the stern gallery as his cloathes was left on the Sopha”.

The general consensus from the ship’s officers and crew was that he must have fallen out of the stern gallery during the night and that they therefore considered his death to be accidental.  Newspaper reports of the incident published on 4 June 1790 however shed two very different lights on what they believed had occurred.

The Hereford Chronicle reported that there had been confrontations throughout the voyage between the Captain and his officers and that he had intended reporting their conduct on his return.  Although not explicitly stated, the tone of the article implies that he may have been pushed to prevent the poor conduct charges from being pressed.

Hereford Chronicle 4 June 1790 British Newspaper Archive

The Chelmsford Chronicle however claims his death as a suicide.  It also references the poor conduct and relations between Captain and Officers, but claims that the Captain had in the days leading up to his death apologised for his conduct and stated his intention not to pursue any conduct charges and to leave it be.  He allegedly even dined with the officers two successive evenings, including the evening prior to his death.  The newspaper also alleges he had written a report to the Board of Directors of the East India Company, dismissed his purser and then written and sealed a letter to a friend before throwing himself out of the window.

Chelmsford Chronicle 4 June 1790 British Newspaper Archive

If Captain Anderson did write a report to the Board of Directors and sent it to them prior to his death, it sadly appears that it no longer survives, and his death therefore will forever be shrouded in mystery. 

Karen Stapley
Curator, India Office Records

Further reading:
IOR/L/MAR/B/287H, Journal of George Max, Chief Mate, 27 Nov 1788-12 Jul 1790
IOR/L/MAR/B/287-H, Ship’s Journal 27 Nov 1788-12 Jul 1790 (unknown author)
Hereford Chronicle 4 June 1790,  and Chelmsford Chronicle 4 June 1790 accessed via the British Newspaper Archive

 

On 9 November 1770, a Tahitian boy about twelve years of age died, probably of tuberculosis, in Batavia, now Jakarta.  In the 18th century Batavia was a Dutch East India Company base, and so plagued by disease that it acquired a reputation as a ‘cemetery’. 

 ‘The Lad Taiyota, native of Otaheite, in the dress of his country.’ from A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas, in his Majesty's Ship the Endeavour (London, 1784). 10497.ff.6, plate IX Images Online

Taiato is among those in the shadows on our historical stage; sadly not unusual for indigenous people.  He made nine appearances in the records, between 13  July, when he joined Captain Cook’s Endeavour with the Tahitian navigator and priest Tupaia, and 26 December 1770, when Cook noted his death alongside others.  He burst into the limelight in one of these appearances which took place off the coast of New Zealand on 15 October 1769.  The Endeavour had only sighted land a few days before, but already a great deal had happened. Banks described  9 October as ‘the most disagreable day My life has yet seen’.  An estimated nine Māori had already been shot dead, and the Endeavour had acquired virtually no fresh supplies of food and water in the nearly two months since they left the Society Islands.

As the crew started to trade for fish with Māori in canoes alongside the ship, a many-layered event unfolded.  Cook tried to trade some red cloth for a Māori cloak, but no sooner was the cloth in the trader’s hand, than he sat down in the canoe, which calmly withdrew.  After a brief discussion amongst themselves, the Māori approached again.  This time however they had other ambitions.  As the ship’s surgeon Monkhouse recorded: ‘we were attending to the coming up of the great war Canoe when all on a sudden an Alarm was given that one of the fishermen had pulled Tupaia’s boy into the boat – they instantly put off, and the great Canoe, as if the scheme had been preconcerted, immediately put themselves in a fighting posture ready to defend the other boat and stood ready to receive the boy from them.  Our astonishment at so unexpected a trick is not to be described’.  The Endeavour’s crew, and particularly Tupaia, were outraged and shots were immediately fired at the Māori, fatally wounding several, and securing Taiato’s escape.

This brief moment in the limelight hints at significant relationships, clearly between Tupaia and Taiato, but also between Taiato and others on the Endeavour.  This invites speculation as to what happened off-stage in the shadows.  According to Druett among others, Taiato was popular with many of the crew. His last, painful, dying words were addressed to his friends, and we have some reason to believe that they were genuine friendships.

Huw Rowlands
Project Manager, Modern Maps

Further reading:
Beaglehole, J. C., 1955-1969. The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery. Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press. (For Monkhouse's account.)
Druett, J., 2011. Tupaia: Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator. Oxford: ABC-CLIO, LLC.
South Seas Voyaging Accounts   

 

Visit our exhibition James Cook: The Voyages
Open until 28 August 2018

 

Spence Broughton was a highwayman executed for robbing the Sheffield and Rotherham mail in 1792.  His body was gibbeted on Attercliffe Common and, notoriously, it hung there for 36 years.  Thousands flocked to see this gory spectacle and it has remained somewhat of a local legend.  Only four contemporary publications about Broughton are recorded, all provincially printed (probably in York) and extremely rare.  We are delighted to add to this with the discovery of a hitherto unknown broadside: 'Full and complete particulars of the dreadful, surprizing, and alarming apparition of Spence Broughton, which appeared to Miss S---- H----, on Sunday morning, April 15, 1792'. 

'Full and complete particulars of the dreadful, surprizing, and alarming apparition of Spence Broughton...'

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Broughton’s fate was of his own making; he deserted his family, gambled and committed many highway robberies after all.  However, in this broadside, the highwayman is instead a victim of a seductress, absolving him of responsibility for his crimes and condemning his unfortunate mistress to a life of' 'never-ending tortures'.

The night before his execution, the highwayman appeared as an apparition in his mistress’s bedroom.  Upon waking she saw Broughton’s coffin, flanked by his widow and three orphans.  The widow reportedly cried:
'Most worthless of thy sex, behold the misery thou hast occasioned!  Behold the widow and the orphans thy infamy has plunged into woe! … The blood of a whole family calls aloud for vengeance upon thee!'

The widow then disappeared, leaving Broughton in spirit-form to condemn his mistress:
'If the sufferings of an innocent and virtuous woman cannot avail, I charge thee to mark my words, for surely they must strike thee with unspeakable remorse.  Have thy not delusive tongue occasioned me to relinquish the chastest love for the lewdest dalliance? Canst thou exist on earth without a foretaste of never-ending tortures? … Surely thou canst not behold my mangled limbs without shedding the most heart-rending tears!'

Broughton then disappeared in a ball of fire, leaving poor Miss S---- H---- terrified and the curtains mysteriously soaked in blood.  The landlady admonished and urged her to 'forsake the highway of destruction, and seek the happy path of reformation and amendment'.  The other surviving printed sources about Spence Broughton strike a similarly sympathetic note about his fate; he apparently repented for his crimes prior to execution and that earned him a measure of public compassion.

'Full and complete particulars of the dreadful, surprizing, and alarming apparition of Spence Broughton...'

This grubby but unique survival adds to the small corpus of provincial printing about Spence Broughton, and to the corpus of highwaymen broadsides more generally.  Popular print in the eighteenth century was saturated by sensationalist tales, infamous criminals and the odd, squeezed-in, moral lesson.  This was perhaps printed just hours before the execution and its extraordinary but decidedly misogynist tale would’ve been avidly consumed by locals.  It was printed cheaply on waste paper – on the back of a Register of Freeholders form - and it cost only a penny.  It could also provide a valuable clue about the identity of Broughton’s much-maligned mistress, whose name has long since been lost.  The initials “S H” may be the printer’s invention but, then again, they may not.  Either way, this is an intriguing piece of printing.
 
Maddy Smith
Curator, Printed Heritage Collections

 

The British Library holds rich resources for the study of black Britain and Asian Britain. A new suite of web pages highlights the wide variety of material available, including printed, archival, visual, music and oral history collections.  The development of these web pages is discussed in the Asian and African studies blog.

The collections of the former India Office Library and Records, which are held at the British Library, illuminate the long history of South Asian people in Britain.  They document the stories of people from all walks of life including Indian seamen, known as lascars, soldiers and others providing vital support during both world wars, workers, servants such as ayahs (nannies), entrepreneurs, campaigners, students, lawyers and doctors, politicians, sportsmen and Indian royalty.  The people featured below are just a small sample of those whose lives are recorded in the collections at the British Library. 

  Portrait of Sake Dean Mahomed , 1826 (T 12646)

Sake Dean Mahomed started his varied career in the East India Company’s Bengal Army.  He left for Ireland in 1782 with a Captain Godfrey Baker. After marrying an Irish woman in 1786, he wrote a book about his travels.  His next venture was the Hindoostanee Coffee House which he set up in London.  When that failed, he moved to Brighton where he created a thriving business as a ‘shampooing surgeon’.  Dean Mahomed’s children lived in Britain and pursued successful careers.

 

Dadabhai Naoroji was the first Indian MP in Britain.  Dadabhai Naoroji -- Mirror of British Merchandise, 1892 (14119.f.37) 

Princess Sophia Duleep Singh was born in 1876 in Suffolk, the sixth child of Maharajah Duleep Singh, the deposed ruler of the Punjab. Proud of her Indian ancestry, Princess Sophia was a generous patron of causes which helped Indian people in Britain. Today, she is best remembered as a passionate suffragette campaigning for women’s right to vote.

Sophia Duleep Singh - The Suffragette, 18 April 1913 IOR/L/PS/11/52, P1608, f.273

The photograph shows Princess Sophia selling The Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court Palace, where she lived in an apartment. 

The Bevin Training Scheme was established in 1941 with the support of the British Minister of Labour, Ernest Bevin. The Second World War increased demand for skilled engineers in the Indian industries engaged in war-related work. The scheme aimed to provide practical training for young Indians who otherwise would not have the means to travel to Britain. This booklet was produced by the Indian Government as part of an essay competition for Bevin trainees to stimulate public interest in the scheme.

Ambassadors of Goodwill - Essays by Bevin Trainees, 1940s IOR/L/I/1/978 f.30

We hope that you will be inspired to look at the new web pages and discover more about our collections relating to the history of black and Asian Britain.

Penny Brook and John O'Brien
India Office Records

Further reading
Asians in Britain
Paper bag reveals forgotten history
Award of Victoria Cross to Khudadad Khan
A tribute to forgotten heroes of the seven seas 
Indian princess in suffragette march
Bevin Indian trainees during the Second World War