Alexander Falconbridge and the Slave Trade

Alexander Falconbridge also gave evidence to a privy council committee, and underwent four days of questions by a House of Commons committee. He explained how badly the slaves were treated on the ships: "The men, on being brought aboard the ship, are immediately fastened together, two and two, by handcuffs on their wrists and by irons rivetted on their legs. They are then sent down between the decks and placed in an apartment partitioned off for that purpose.... They are frequently stowed so close, as to admit of no other position than lying on their sides. Nor will the height between decks, unless directly under the grating, permit the indulgence of an erect posture; especially where there are platforms, which is generally the case. These platforms are a kind of shelf, about eight or nine feet in breadth, extending from the side of the ship toward the centre. They are placed nearly midway between the decks, at the distance of two or three feet from each deck, Upon these the Negroes are stowed in the same manner as they are on the deck underneath."

As the ship's doctor, Falconbridge observed: "The hardships and inconveniences suffered by the Negroes during the passage are scarcely to be enumerated or conceived. They are far more violently affected by seasickness than Europeans. It frequently terminates in death, especially among the women. But the exclusion of fresh air is among the most intolerable. For the purpose of admitting this needful refreshment, most of the ships in the slave trade are provided, between the decks, with five or six air-ports on each side of the ship, of about five inches in length and four in breadth. In addition, some ships, but not one in twenty, have what they denominate wind-sails. But whenever the sea is rough and the rain heavy it becomes necessary to shut these and every other conveyance by which the air is admitted. The fresh air being thus excluded, the Negroes' rooms soon grow intolerable hot. The confined air, rendered noxious by the effluvia exhaled from their bodies and being repeatedly breathed, soon produces fevers and fluxes which generally carries off great numbers of them."

Falconbridge was encouraged by other opponents of the slave-trade to publish the information he provided to the House of Commons. The pamphlet, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa was published in 1790. He sold the copyright to the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade which printed 6000 copies, and with the proceeds set up as a doctor at Lodway, near Bristol. On 16th October 1788 he married Anna Maria Horwood.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASfalconbridge.htm

Edward Brittain and Homosexuality

Vera Brittain wrote to her brother Edward Brittain on 20th February, 1917:

"You and I are not only aesthetic but ascetic - at any rate in regard to sex. Or perhaps, since "ascetic" implies rather a lack of emotion, it would be more correct to say exclusive - Geoffrey is very much this, and Victor, and Roland was. What I mean by this is, that so many people are attracted by the opposite sex simply because it is the opposite sex - the average officer and the average "nice girl" demand, I am sure, little but this. But where you and I are concerned, sex by itself doesn't interest us unless it is united with brains and personality; in fact we rather think of the latter first, and the person's sex afterwards... I think very probably that older women will appeal to you much more than younger ones, as they do me. This means that you will probably have to wait a good many years before you find anyone you could wish to marry, but I don't think this need worry you, for there is plenty of time, and very often people who wait get something well worth waiting for."

On 15th June, 1918, the Austrian Army launched a surprise attack with a heavy bombardment of the British front-line along the bottom of the San Sisto Ridge. Edward led his men in a counter-offensive and had regained the lost positions, but soon afterwards, he was shot through the head by a sniper and had died instantaneously. He was buried with four other officers in the small cemetery at Granezza.

Alan Bishop, the author of Letters From a Lost Generation (1998), points out that his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Hudson, had ordered an investigation into Brittain's homosexuality: "Shortly before the action in which he was killed, Edward had been faced with an enquiry and, in all probability, a court martial when his battalion came out of the line, because of his involvement with men in his company. It remains a possibility that, faced with the disgrace of a court martial, Edward went into battle deliberately seeking to be killed."


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWbrittainE.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jbrittain.htm

Oswald Rayner and the Assassination of Rasputin

Richard Cullen, the author of Rasputin: The Role of Britain's Secret Service in his Torture and Murder (2010), claims that Oswald Rayner fired the shot that killed Rasputin.

On 7th January 1917, MI6's Stephen Alley wrote to John Scale in Romania: "Although matters have not proceeded entirely to plan, our objective has clearly been achieved. Reaction to the demise of Dark Forces (a codename for Rasputin) has been well received by all, although a few awkward questions have already been asked about wider involvement. Rayner is attending to loose ends and will no doubt brief you on your return."

Richard Cullen, the author of Rasputin (2010), has argued that the assassination of Grigory Rasputin had been organised by Scale, Oswald Rayner and Stephen Alley: "Rasputin's death was calculated, brutal, violent and slow and it was orchestrated by John Scale, Stephen Alley and Oswald Rayner through the close personal relationship that existed between Rayner and Yusupov." Cullen adds: "Given the clear and supportable assertions that he (Scale) was involved in the plot to kill Rasputin, was this the reason for his absence from Petrograd?"In 1918 Oswald Rayner was posted to Stockholm where he served under John Scale. He recruited Russian speakers to infiltrate Russia. He returned to Russia the following year and served in Vladivostok.

Rayner left the British Army in 1920 but in 1921 he was in Moscow as part of a trade mission. In 1927 Rayner joined forces with Felix Yusupov to translate his book, Rasputin: His Malignant Influence and his Assassination, into English. Oswald Rayner died in Botley, Oxfordshire, in 1961.

In 2010 Michael Smith, the author of Six: A History of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (2010), argued that Oswald Rayner took part in the assassination of Grigory Rasputin.


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SSrayner.htm

The Political Education of Sir Roger Casement

Casement's interest in politics intensified in 1912 when the Ulster Unionists pledged themselves to resist the imposition of Irish Home Rule, by force if necessary. In 1913 he became a member of the provisional committee set up to act as the governing body of the Irish Volunteer Force (IVF) in opposition to the Ulster Volunteer Force. He helped organize local IVF units, and in May 1914 he declared that "It is quite clear to every Irishman that the only rule John Bull respects is the rifle."

Casement's activities were brought to the attention of Basil Thomson, head of the Special Branch. Thompson later admitted that it was one of his agents, Arthur Maundy Gregory, who told him about Casement's homosexuality. According to Brian Marriner: "Gregory, a man of diverse talents, had various other sidelines. One of them was compiling dossiers on the sexual habits of people in high positions, even Cabinet members, especially those who were homosexual. Gregory himself was probably a latent homosexual, and hung around homosexual haunts in the West End, picking up information.... There is a strong suggestion that he may well have used this sort of material for purposes of blackmail." Thomson later admitted that "Gregory was the first person... to warn that Casement was particularly vulnerable to blackmail and that if we could obtain possession of his diaries they could prove an invaluable weapon with which to fight his influence as a leader of the Irish rebels and an ally of the Germans."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/IREcasement.htm

Jessie Stephen and the WSPU

Jessie Stephen was an active member of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). In 1912 the WSPU began a campaign to destroy the contents of pillar-boxes. By December, the government claimed that over 5,000 letters had been damaged by the WSPU. According to her biographer, Audrey Canning: "Jessie was assigned to drop acid into local pillar boxes. while dressed in her maid's uniform. As a working-class suffragette, she enlisted the support of dockers in the ILP to deal with hecklers at WSPU meetings." In March 1913 was the youngest of a delegation of Glasgow working-women who went to London to lobby the House of Commons.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/WstephenJ.htm

Beatrice Webb and Aldous Huxley

Beatrice Webb praised the writing of Aldous Huxley but disliked the subject matter of his books. She put in him the same group as D. H. Lawrence, Compton MacKenzie, David Garnett and Norman Douglas: "clever novelists... all depicting men and women as mere animals, and morbid at that. except always that these bipeds practise birth control and commit suicide. so it looks as if the species would happily die out. it is an ugly and tiresome idol of the mind, but it lends itself to a certain type of fantastic wit and stylish irony.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jhuxley.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUwebbB.htm

D. H. Lawrence and Jessie Chambers

D. H. Lawrence became friendly with Jessie Chambers in 1901. Her sister, Ann Chambers Howard, has argued: "They spent a great deal of time together working and reading, walking through the fields and woods, talking and discussing. Jessie was interested in everything, to such a degree that her intensity of perception almost amounted to a form of worship. She felt that her own appreciation of beauty, of poetry, of people, and of her own sorrows amounted to something far greater than anyone else had ever experienced. Her depth of felling was a great stimulation to Lawrence, who with his naturally sensitive mind was roused to critical and creative consciousness by her." Together they developed an interest in literature. This included reading books together and discussing authors and writing. It was under Jessie's influence that in 1905 Lawrence started to write poetry. Lawrence later admitted that Jessie was "the anvil on which I hammered myself out." The following year he began work on his first novel, The White Peacock.

In 1909 Jessie Chambers sent some of Lawrence's poems to Ford Madox Ford, the editor of The English Review. Ford was greatly impressed with the poems and arranged a meeting with Lawrence. After reading the manuscript of The White Peacock, wrote to the publisher William Heinemann recommending it. Ford also encouraged Lawrence to write about his mining background.

Lawrence also began work on the autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers. He sent the first-drafts of the novel to Jessie Chambers. As her sister, Ann Chambers Howard points out: "The ruthless streak in his nature now began to emerge and halfway through the book Jessie became increasingly alarmed and bewildered by his cruel treatment of people whom they knew. He began to include people, episodes and attitudes which were quite foreign to their nature and to their previous behaviour and experience.... My father remembered watching her as she read the manuscripts, writing her comments carefully at the side before sending them back to him. Lawrence rejected her advice completely, insisting on including all the things which she had begged him to alter or omit. He continued to send her the manuscripts, asking for advice which she in her anguish repeatedly gave, only to be continually ignored." Eventually she refused to answer Lawrence's letters and their relationship came to an end.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JlawrenceDH.htm