Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

Income Tax and the Regency

Updated on April 18, 2013 by Diane Gaston

**Cherry Blossoms in Washington, DC

Myretta entertained and educated us about some of the odd taxes that existed in and around “our” period. But today is Income Tax Day here in the US, so I went looking for some connection between income tax and the Regency.

There was an income tax during part of the Regency, it turns out.

An income tax was first introduced in 1799 by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, in order to pay for weapons and equipment for the impending Napoleonic War. It was a graduated income tax, levied at 2 pence a pound in incomes over 60 pounds, increased to 2 shillings per pound on incomes over 200 pounds.

The tax was on income from land, from public securities, from trade, professions, vocations and employment, income from interest, foreign income, and casual income (gambling winnings).

Although Pitt hoped that the tax would raise 10 million pounds, its actual amount for 1799 was 6 million. Later tax on dividend income was added.

Pitt’s income tax was abolished in 1802 when Henry Addington took over as Prime Minister (Pitt had resigned over Catholic Emancipation) and the Treaty of Amiens temporarily ended hostilities with France. Addington reintroduced the income tax a year later when the war started again. It was abolished in 1816, one year after the Battle of Waterloo.

There is another connection between Income Tax and the Regency. The first income tax proposed in the United States was during the War of 1812, which, of course, was with with England during “our” period. Ironically, the US income tax proposal was based on the British Tax Act of 1798. It was never levied, however, because the war ended before it came up for vote.

So….Have you complete your taxes yet? Or are you going to be in line at the Post Office minutes before 12 Midnight?

We did our taxes early this year. We sent them off yesterday!

(**I couldn’t find an Income Taxes image, so enjoy a glimpse of DC’s Cherry Blossoms!)

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged income tax | 4 Replies

Able was I ere I saw Elba

Updated on April 18, 2013 by Janet Mullany

On this day in 1814, the Treaty of Fontainebleu deposed Napoleon and sent him into exile to the island of Elba. He escaped just under a year later, set sail for France, and in one of those unexpected twists of history, returned to power. No one’s quite sure how he managed to escape, but Napoleon was a man of great energy and industry, and although contemporary cartoons depict him as a disconsolate exile on a rocky island, that was artistic license.

Now one of the many differences between the rest of us and the Corsican Monster is that if we were living in a castle in this sort of scenery, we’d grit our teeth and stay put. But not Napoleon. Apart from plotting his escape, he was quite busy as Emperor of Elba, carrying out social and economic reforms. He had a personal escort of 1,000 men, a household staff, and 110,000 subjects.

But it was a time of great misery for Napoleon, the man who’d once had almost all of Europe at his feet. The Treaty of Fontainbleu also sent his wife and son to Vienna. Napoleon was so distraught he attempted to commit suicide with a vial of poison he carried, but the poison was old and only made him sick. Shortly after his arrival, he learned of the death of the former Empress Josephine.

It’s possible his English guardians on the island aided, or at least turned a blind eye to, Napoleon’s escape plans. The restored French monarchy was proving unsatisfactory, which meant that once again the balance of power in Europe was threatened. This is discussed in this fascinating article, A Sympathetic Ear: Napoleon, Elba, and the British, which also explores the phenomenon of Napoleon as tourist trap.

British seamen proved to be keen visitors. Indeed, Napoleon had embarked for Elba on April 28th, aboard the frigate HMS Undaunted, whose captain, Thomas Ussher, wrote home on May 1st: ‘It has fallen to my extraordinary lot to be the gaolor of the instrument of the misery Europe has so long endured’. By the end of the month, the man whom Ussher could not even bring himself to name had become his ‘bon ami’, and had given him 2,000 bottles of wine, and a diamond encrusted snuffbox. In return Ussher presented Napoleon with a barge, which he flatteringly reserved for his own exclusive use.

Napoleon landed in Cannes on March 1, 1815 and declared:

I am the sovereign of the Island of Elba, and have come with six hundred men to attack the King of France and his six hundred thousand soldiers. I shall conquer this kingdom.

As he progressed through France, soldiers sent to attack him instead joined him, so that he made a triumphant return into Paris on March 20. There’s a great first-hand account of his arrival here.

So, if you’d gone to visit Napoleon on Elba with the expectation that he’d probably give you lots of wine and a diamond-encrusted snuffbox, what would you take him as a gift?

Now onto shameless self-promotion. If you’re in Maryland, I’m going to be signing tomorrow at the Catonsville Historical Society, 7 – 9 pm in the company of some excellent authors. Looks like there will be some wine too!

Posted in Research | Tagged Napoleon Bonaparte | 2 Replies

Venus de Milo

Updated on April 18, 2013 by Diane Gaston

Today marks the 193rd anniversary of the discovery of the Venus de Milo on the Aegean island of Melos. In 1820 Melos was under the rule of the Ottoman Turks.

The famous statue, broken into several pieces, was discovered by a farmer who’d been removing stones from and ancient wall. He showed his discovery to two French ensigns whose ships were in port. One of the ensigns, Jules Dumont d’Urville, later told the Comte de Marcellus, secretary to the Marquis de Rivière, the French ambassador in Constantinople, who convinced the ambassador that he should purchase the statue and present it as a gift to restored King Louis XVIII.

Marcellus traveled to Melos only to discover that the statue had been sold to a provincial pasha but the local officials were convinced that France had the earlier claim. Marcellus paid the officials 250 francs and the farmer, 750. The Turks also fined the officials for not holding the statue for the French, but Rivière reimbursed them in return for a quittance so that the claim on the statue could not be disputed. (Although it later was disputed by the Germans who claimed they owned the land upon which it was discovered. That dispute continued into the twentieth century)

The Venus de Milo arrived in Paris and was presented to the king in March, 1821, although he was too obese to see it and did not see it for another year. Its restoration was under the supervision of the Comte de Forbin who had been named director of the Louvre in 1816. The Venus de Milo became a source of pride for France, a worthy rival to the British Museum’s acquisition of the Elgin Marbles and some compensation for the loss of the Apollo Belvedere and the Venus de’ Medici, both returned to Italy after Napoleon’s defeat.

More controversy ensued as to the age of the statue. Was it a masterpiece of the Classical Age or an example from the later, less prestigious Hellenistic period? The latter won out eventually and the Louvre dates the statue from around 120 BC.

Another dilemma was whether the arms should be restored. All that was discovered of the arms was a fragment of a hand holding an apple. Ultimately Forbin decided not to restore the arms.

The Comte de Forbin led a rather exciting life. An artist, in the early 1800s he was the lover of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline. When she tired of him, he was sent to war, distinguishing himself in battle
and winning a Legion of Honor. He also had an affair with Madame Récamier. Both women are immortalized in the Louvre. Pauline in a statue of by Canova; Récamier in a portrait by David.

Jules Dumont d’Urville, one of the ensigns who was originally shown the Venus, rose to become a rear admiral and a renowned French explorer, botanist and cartographer. He explored the Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. He is mentioned by Jules Verne in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Dumont d’Urville and his whole family died in the flames of the Versailles train crash, France’s first railway disaster.

Have you seen the Venus de Milo? What is your favorite statue, ancient or not?

Posted in Research | Tagged Venus di Milo | 6 Replies

Laughing Gas Is Your Friend

Updated on April 18, 2013 by Amanda McCabe/Laurel McKee

So, tomorrow I have to go in for a small surgery (luckily outpatient, and I am stocked up on pudding cups and Jane Austen movies for recovery…), but it made me think again how grateful I am for modern surgery! Especially anasthetics and painkillers. And when I looked around for something to talk about on the blog today, I found out that ether was first used in March for surgical purposes (though I couldn’t find an exact date!). Also nitrous oxide played a very important role on last weekend’s episode of Call the Midwife…

So here is a very short look at the history of some surgical painkillers….

Nitrous oxide (laughing gas) was first synthesized by English and chemist Joseph Priestly in 1772. He called it phlogisticated nitrous air and published his discovery in the book Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air (1775), where he described how to produce the preparation of “nitrous air diminished”, by heating iron filings dampened with nitric acid. The first important use of nitrous oxide was by Thomas Beddoes and James Watt, who discussed it in their book Considerations on the Medical Use and on the Production of Factitious Airs (1794). James Watt also invented a new machine to produce “Factitious Airs” (i.e. nitrous oxide) and a novel “breathing apparatus” to inhale the gas.

The machine to produce “Factitious Airs” had three parts: A furnace to burn the needed material, a vessel with water where the produced gas passed through in a spiral pipe (for impurities to be “washed off”), and finally the gas cylinder with a gasometer where the gas produced, ‘air,’ could be tapped into portable air bags (made of airtight oily silk). The breathing apparatus consisted of one of the portable air bags connected with a tube to a mouthpiece. In the town of Hotwells in 1798, Thomas Beddoes opened the “Pneumatic Institute for Relieving Diseases by Medical Airs”. In the basement of the building, a large-scale machine was producing the gases under the supervision of a young Humphry Davy, who was encouraged to experiment with new gases for patients to inhale. In 1800, Davy published his Researches, Chemical and Philosophical where he notes the analgesic effect of nitrous oxide and its potential to be used for surgical operations. (But another 44 years went by before doctors attempted to use it for surgery. The use of nitrous oxide as a recreational drug at “laughing gas parties” became a trend beginning in 1799. While the effects of the gas generally make the user appear “stuporous, dreamy and sedated,” some people also “get the giggles” and probably say some pretty embarrassing stuff….

The first time nitrous oxide was used as a surgery anasthetic was when Connecticut dentist Horace Wells demonstrated on a dental extraction on Dec. 11, 1844. But this new method didn’t come into general use until 1863, when Dr. Gardener Colton successfully started to use it in all his “Colton Dental Association” clinics in NYC. Over the next three years, Colton successfully administered nitrous oxide to more than 25,000 patients.

Today nitrous is most often used in conjunction with local anesthetic in dental surgery. Nitrous oxide was not found to be strong enough for use alone in major surgery in hospital settings. Sulfuric ether came into use in October 1846, along with chloroform in 1847. (Queen Victoria was a great advocate for the use of chloroform in childbirth). When Joseph Clover invented the “gas-ether inhaler” in 1876, it became a common practice at hospitals to initiate all anesthetic treatments with a mild flow of nitrous oxide, and then gradually increase the dose with the stronger ether/chloroform. Clover’s gas-ether inhaler was designed to supply the patient with nitrous oxide and ether at the same time, with the exact mixture being controlled by the operator of the device. It remained in use by many hospitals until the 1930s. (Modern machines still use the same principle launched with Clover’s gas-ether inhaler, to initiate the anesthesia with nitrous oxide, before the administration of a more powerful anesthetic.)

What medical advances are you grateful for today?? And what movie would you recommend I watch to make me feel better?

Posted in Research | Tagged nitrous oxide, Regency Medicine | 7 Replies

Jewels

Updated on April 18, 2013 by Myretta

Because it’s a holiday weekend and I’m running a bit late, you get a short post with lots of pretty pictures. Today, we’re looking at Jewelry of our era. The information and pictures are from Georgian Jewellery 1714-1830, a gorgeously illustrated overview of Georgian jewels.

Click on any of the thumbnails to get a larger image of the various pieces.

Cameos and intaglios are lumped together because they’re both made from carving stone. The difference is that in cameos, the design stands out and in intaglios it’s carved into the surface. agate, onyx, malachite and lapis were the stones of choice because of the their natural bands of color.

Opaline glass or opal paste was made in Derbyshire and in France. This was a milky glass in which cooling during its manufacture caused a separation of various oxidex. Opaline glass was a favorite for daytime wear.

Diamonds. There is much to be said about diamonds and probably not much that needs saying. During our period, the table cut (flat on the top, faceted on the sides) of the 16th and 17th centuries was superseded by the rose cut (many different shaped and sized facets over a small culet, allowing the least amount of light to escape through the bottom of the stone.

The chain was a particularly Georgian piece of jewelry. It could be woven, knitted, engraved or stamped out links. It would frequently feature a distinctive clasp. There was a seemingly endless array of option. Besides the gold, the chains were made out of silver and other materials such as iron, steel, gilt metal and pinchbeck.

Steel was an interesting jewel choice during the Georgian period. The steel was fine cut and highly polished and primarily a night-time adornment as it reflected candle-glow particulary well. Queen Charlotte wore a cut-steel chain made by Matthew Boulton.

Seed pearls, tiny natural pearls from India were an essential part of Georgian jewelry. They were used in a variety of ways: long tasseled sautoirs, threaded into intricate designs on slides or clasps, used as surrounds for gemstones.

Iron is probably not the first metal that jumps to mind when thinking about jewelry but black-lacquered cast iron jewelry was made by the Royal Berlin Foundry beginning in 1804 and became fashionable during the Napoleonic Wars. It was made by moulding shapes into wax, impressing them in fine sand and then filling the impressions with molten iron. Once cooled, it was usually lacquered black.

Coral had a brief period as jewelry desired for both day and evening wear. It came in the form of cameos, carved rosettes, acorns, or cherubs’ heads, and beads carved in facets or crosshatched. In the early 1800s it was even paired with diamonds for evening dress.

Paste – It’s more than just something to replace the jewels you’ve pawned to support your gambling habit. Much of the paste used in jewelry during the Georgian era was celebrated as jewels in their own right. Paste was highly regarded because the stones could be cut into any shape required for a setting. There are still some beautiful examples of fine paste jewelry.

Wedgwood jewelry is distinctly English. Josiah Wedgwood’s ceramic-ware plaques were included in brooches, pendants, rings, buckles, clasps and earrings. Mathew Boulton of Birmingham used jasperware ceramic, with its soft matte finish set into gold, silver, marcasite or cut-steel. The beaded necklaces are particularly lovely.