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TRANSACTIONS OF THE LEICESTER LITERARY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.

VOLUME 103 2009

THE LEICESTER LITERARY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETYFounded in 1835

www.leicesterlitandphil.org.uk

OFFICERS AND MEMBERS OF COUNCIL

President: Mr R. Gill, MA

Life Vice-PresidentsDr T.D. Ford, OBE, PhD, BSc, FGS

Mrs H.A.E. Lewis, JP, MA

Vice PresidentsMrs A. Dean, B.A.Mr B.D. Beeson

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Members of CouncilS.A. Ashraf, MA

Professor P.J. Boylan BSc, PhD, FGS, FMA, FBIM, FRSAMr J.H. Dickinson B Sc CEng, FIMMM, FGS

Professor J.C. Fothergill, BSc, MSc, PhD, CEng, BSc Eng, CPhys, FIEE M Inst P FIEEMrs A. Fuchs

Mr P. Hammersley, CBE, CEng, BSc Eng, MIMechEMr L. Lloyd-Smith, JP, DipArch, FRIBA

Mrs F. SmithsonProfessor M. Stannard, BA, MA, DPhil, FEA, FRLS

Mr M. Taylor, BA, DipTP, MA, MRTPI, IHBCDr D. Thurston, BSc, PhD.

Canon M. Wilson MA MBAThe Vice Chancellor of the University of LeicesterThe Vice Chancellor of De Montfort University*

*represented by Professor Heidi Macpherson, PhD, FRSA, FHEAOne representative of the Geology Section

One representative of the Natural History Section

Geology Section Hon. Secretary:Ms Fiona Barnaby, Cuckoo Cottage, 22 Church Lane, Dingley, Market Harborough. LE16 8PG

Natural History Section Hon. Secretary:Mrs S. Walton, 29 School Lane, Huncote, Leicester, LE9 3BD.

Independent Examiners: Mr K. Smithson, FCIB, MIMgt, FRSAMr P.E.K. Fuchs, M.A

The Not Altogether Elementary Case ofSherlock Holmes

Wife or Muse: Philip Larkin’s Love Triangle

New Light on Lewis Carroll

Ernest Gimson: Archetypal Arts and Crafts Designer

The Future of the Universe

Phenomenal Fluids

Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs

The Role of the Media in PromotingCommunity Cohesion

Glimpses of Life at 142 Strand in the 1850s

Whatever became of the Industrial Revolution?

Alfred Russel Wallace and the Birds of Paradise

Growth of a Mountain Belt: Looking at the Alps

Super – Eruptions of an unusual Style

Annual Reports

'Steel Fire Dog. Image © Leicester Museums and Galleries'


VOLUME 103 • 2009

CONTENTS

THE NOT ALTOGETHER ELEMENTARY CASE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Presidential Address by Mr Richard Gill ..............................................................................2

WIFE OR MUSE: PHILIP LARKIN'S LOVE TRIANGLE

Professor James Booth .........................................................................................................5

THEATRICALS IN A QUIET LIFE: NEW LIGHT ON LEWIS CARROLL

Professor Richard Foulkes,...................................................................................................8

ERNEST GIMSON: ARCHETYPAL ARTS AND CRAFTS DESIGNER

Mrs Mary Greensted............................................................................................................9

THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

Professor Jack Meadows ....................................................................................................11

PHENOMENAL FLUIDS

Professor Martyn Poliakoff .................................................................................................14

GRAVE SECRETS OF DINOSAURS

Dr Philip Manning.............................................................................................................16

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN PROMOTING COMMUNITY COHESIONTHE LEICESTER MERCURY MEDIA LECTURE

Nick Carter, .......................................................................................................................17

GLIMPSES OF LIFE AT 142 STRAND IN THE 1850S

Professor Rosemary Ashton................................................................................................20

WHATEVER BECAME OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?

Sir Neil Cossons OBE ........................................................................................................23

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE AND THE BIRDS OF PARADISE: A TALK

BY SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH

Summary by Jan Dawson ..................................................................................................26

SUPER – ERUPTIONS OF AN UNUSUAL STYLE FROM THE YELLOWSTONEHOTSPOT TRACK

Ben Ellis ............................................................................................................................28

ANNUAL REPORTS...........................................................................................................29

Cover picture: 'Steel Fire Dog. Image © Leicester Museums and Galleries' (cf Ernest Gimson, p9)Colour versions of the illustrations in this volume are in the on-line versions of these

Transactions <www.leicesterlitandphil.org.uk>

© Copyright 2009 The Leicester Literary & Philosophical Society, c/o Leicester Museum, New Walk, Leicester, LE1 7EA

ISSN 0141 3511

THE NOT ALTOGETHER ELEMENTARY CASE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

Presidential Address by

Mr Richard GillDelivered on 6th October 2008

In 'elementary' matters we are dealing with single, simple entities of which the nature is transparent. Many ofthe matters that puzzled Watson (and readers) were 'elementary' to Sherlock Holmes. Yet the figure whofound the world of human (and particularly criminal) doings 'elementary' is not in himself or his context'elementary'. Conan Doyle created a character with many facets and the fictional world in which he placedhim has many aspects.

Transactions of the Leicester Literary & Philosophical Society.

2 Volume 103 • 2009

The figures of popular fiction do not usually have many

characteristics. Count Dracula, whose creator, Bram

Stoker, was known to Conan Doyle, is one of the undead

who sucks the blood of the living and is vulnerable to

daylight. Everything else about him is derived from that.

But Sherlock Holmes, although a character of popular

fiction, is richly and solidly specified.

His appearance is distinctive: he was lean and tall - over

six foot - had black hair, a narrow face, grey eyes, thin

lips and heavy brows. In dress he was prim, adopting a

frock coat in public (the deerstalker and cape were the

creations of Sydney Paget, an early illustrator). Privately,

his dressing gowns - one blue, one mouse, one purple -

gave him a more Bohemian air. He was a prodigious

smoker (he kept his tobacco in a Persian slipper), and,

yes, the talk about drugs is true: The Sign of Four begins

with him taking "a seven-per-cent" solution of cocaine.

Holmes was also a writer. Before Watson meets him, he

had published Upon the Distinction between the Ashes ofthe Various Tobaccos, and in his retirement he wrote the

Practical Handbook of Bee Culture. His monograph on

the polyphonic motets of de Lassus was said to be the last

word on the subject! And Holmes has a social context.

His family were country squires, and he had attended

university, though only for two years.

Yet Holmes, like other heroes of popular fiction, does

have one defining characteristic: his acute powers of

reasoning.

Conan Doyle knew what he was saying when he stressed

that Holmes was a deductive thinker. Deduction is

reasoning from premises to conclusions. Although Conan

Doyle was probably unaware of it, the logic of deduction,

and of science as a deductive form of thinking, was

vigorously argued for in the Vienna of the 1920s by Karl

Popper. Science, he argued, always starts with a theory.

Only in the light of a theory can anything observed be

evidence. Evidence is always evidence of something.

Theories are called into question when what is observed

is incompatible with the predictions of theory. If the

theories no longer make sense of observations, then a

new theory is needed.

In the Sherlock Holmes stories, the common

presupposition we all have about how the world normally

works is equivalent to the theories of science. When

something happens that is no longer compatible with the

theory, then a new explanation is required. As eminent

professors do not normally climb up the ivy on the front

of their houses ('The Adventure of the Creeping Man'), a

new explanation (a new theory) is required.

When faced with a breach in the normal workings of the

world, Holmes reviews all the salient details and comes

up with a theory. In 'The Adventure of the Sussex

Vampire' he says that he formed his theory as to what has

happened before he left Baker Street. At any 'scene of

crime', his investigations are guided by his theory. In

'Silver Blaze' he says he found a half-burned match

because he was looking for it.

Popper insisted that the best a scientist can hope for is to

secure a theory against refutation. As he remarked, the

sighting of a single black swan falsifies the statement that


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all swans are white. Similarly, one piece of evidence can

destroy the theory with which Holmes is working. Thus,

when in 'The Adventure of the Speckled Band' he

discovers that a window has not been opened, he has to

abandon his theory that the murder, if that is what has

occurred, is due to someone gaining entrance to the

house.

For the reader, deduction provides many incidental

pleasures. In 'The Blue Carbuncle', Holmes builds a

picture of a man's appearance, character, habits and

circumstances solely from examining his hat, and in 'The

Adventure of the Dancing Men' he deduces from

Watson's behaviour that Watson does not intend to invest

in South African securities.

The stories are hardly simple in their presentation of

Holmes' social world. Conan Doyle does not have

Dickens' imaginative power of evoking the multifarious

life of London but he convincingly does justice to many

aspects of our late nineteenth and early twentieth century

metropolis. In this he stands with many other artists who

responded to the allure of London's fascinating life.

Monet and Whistler painted London; Elgar and Vaughan

Williams celebrated it in music, and of writers the poets

Arthur Symons and John Davidson and novelists George

Gissing and Arthur Morrison were drawn to the resilience

and squalor of its teeming life.

Conan Doyle's London creates something of the social

and topographical variety of the city, and in its creation

there are telling details that are representative and

pertinently contemporary in some cases. There is

atmospheric gaslight filtered through fog: 'a dense

drizzly fog lay low upon the ground…The yellow glare

from the shop-windows streamed out into the steamy,

vaporous air and murky shifting radiance…' (The Sign ofFour). Perhaps such passages stand behind the yellow

fog of T.S. Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'.

The busy social and commercial life of the capital is seen

in the restaurants at which Watson and Holmes dine, and

in one story there is a Vegetarian Restaurant, situated in

Saxe-Coburg Square. There is music, including a Charles

Halle concert in which the violin soloist was Halle's wife,

Wilhelmine Norman-Neruda. Nor was Conan Doyle

unaware of the sprawling suburbs - "the monotonous

brick streets, weary suburban highways" ('The Adventure

of the Retired Colourman'). Looking from the railway at

the acres of terraced streets between Clapham and

Wandsworth, Holmes draws attention to the Board

Schools (an innovation of the 1870 Education Act),

which are "light-houses…Beacons of the future!" ('The

Naval Treaty') (In politics Holmes was something of a

Liberal.) Other distinctly London features include the

railway stations, the Underground, the Exchanges, clubs,

parks and bridges. Mention should be made of the

theatres, if only because Holmes has a decidedly

theatrical manner. The night before he was hanged,

Baron Dowson said of Holmes that "what the law had

gained the stage had lost." ('The Adventure of the

Mazarin Stone')

The 'crimes' Holmes investigates are divertingly varied.

About a third involve murder, several are motivated by

revenge, occasionally there is horrible violence and there

are nasty cases of crimes committed by fathers against

their daughters. Some, strictly speaking, are not crimes at

all. They don't only happen in London. Cornwall, Devon,

Norfolk and Sussex feature. No crime is committed in

Leicestershire, though Leicester gets one mention (and

Holmes never mentions Nottingham!). In particular, the

Home Counties harbour real horrors: Voodoo, poisonous

snakes, kidnap, torture, attempted forced marriage and

one victim, whose head is "smashed to pulp" ('The

Adventure of Wisteria Lodge'). Holmes summed up his

feelings about the apparently peaceable countryside

when, on his way to Winchester, he said that "the lowest

and vilest alleys of London do not present a more

dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful

countryside." ('The Adventure of the Copper Beeches')

Ever the scientist, Holmes delighted in grading criminals.

John Clay ('The Red-Headed League') is said to be the

fourth smartest man in London (and possibly the third);

Colonel Sebastian Moran ('The Adventure of the Empty

House') is the second most dangerous man in London,

and his master, Professor Moriarty, is the "Napoleon of

crime" ('The Final Problem').

Two areas of the tales add to the variety and hence the

pleasure of reading Sherlock Holmes, First, what is to be

made of Holmes relationships with women? He can be

notoriously critical: "Women are never entirely to be

trusted" (The Sign of Four), yet Watson says he had "a

peculiarly ingratiating way with women" ('The

Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez'). Once, in pursuit of

information, he became engaged to a housemaid ('The

Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton'). In The Signof Four, Holmes says that he "should never marry".

Perhaps Conan Doyle's life casts a little light on Homes'

decision. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic, being

educated at Stonyhurst, the Jesuit school. Although he

abandoned Catholicism, he no doubt picked up the


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Catholic argument for priestly celibacy - that a man may

dedicate himself completely to his parish. Perhaps in a

similar way a celibate Holmes could devote himself

completely to the science of detection.

A second issue is the relationship between Holmes the

scientific thinker and the air of mystery - the sense of

agencies other than human - that pervades several of the

stories. Holmes insists that "It is a mistake to confound

strangeness with mystery" (A Study in Scarlet), yet

readers might feel that in The Hound of the Baskervillesthe baying in the night - "it was impossible to say whence

it came" - allows Doyle to combine Holmes' exactitude

with a sense that there are indeed mysteries.

And that is where we should close. I once asked Jean

Humphreys whether her late husband, Arthur - first

Professor of English at Leicester - read Sherlock Holmes.

"Oh", she replied, "he loved him." Sherlock Holmes may

not be elementary - but perhaps our feelings about him

are.

WIFE OR MUSE: PHILIP LARKIN'S LOVE TRIANGLE

Professor James Booth, Head of Department of English, University of Hull

Lecture delivered on 20 October 2008Sponsored by the University of Leicester Bookshop

The love triangle of Philip Larkin, Monica Jones and Maeve Brennan, has taken its place in popular literarymythology, alongside Byron's disastrous marriage, the romance of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, andthe marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. From the late 1940s until his death in 1985 Larkin maintained aphysical and emotional intimacy with Monica Jones, whom he had met in 1946 when he was Deputy Librarianat Leicester University College. However Monica remained at a distance in Leicester, while he took up postsfirst in Belfast (1950-5) and later in Hull. Then, from about 1960 onwards, he developed a close emotionalrelationship with Maeve Brennan, an assistant in the Hull Library. It seems that their relationship did notbecome physical in the usual sense until at least 1975, and possibly not even then. Both women wanted tomarry him, and in his letters he discusses the idea of marriage with both. But if we look at the relationshipsthrough the lens of his poetry, it becomes apparent that marriage was effectively impossible. He could neithermarry nor abandon either of them. They answered two fundamentally opposed imperatives of his imagination,both of which were essential for his poetry.


Volume 103 • 2009 5

The logic of the triangle is a fundamentally literaryone. The two women played the archetypal (orstereotypical) rôles of Wife and Muse, but with theparadoxical twist that the 'wife' was kept at adistance and the muse was a familiar everydaycompanion. The poet visited Monica regularly everyfew weeks. Their annual holidays together andintimate correspondence witness to a domesticcloseness which was, as Anthony Thwaite put it, 'justlike a marriage'. An equal and opposite paradoxapplies to Philip's relationship with Maeve. They saweach other in the Library every working day, and thepropriety and restraint of this professionalrelationship carried over into their lives outside thelibrary, where it was compounded by Maeve'sCatholic scruples about 'pre-marital sex', and whather friends and family agree on calling her'innocence'. Thus, though Philip could be scathing inletters to Monica about Maeve's provinciallimitations, to his poetic imagination she appeared asthe symbol of an unattainable purity and beauty.

This dialectical pattern was established by Larkin'searliest relationships with women. In 'To My Wife'(1951) he shows the strains of his emotionally fraughtengagement in the late 1940s to Ruth Bowman,whom he met in Wellington, Shropshire, when hetook up his first library post there:

Choice of you shuts up that peacock-fanThe future was, in which temptingly spread

All that elaborative nature can.Matchless potential! but unlimitedOnly so long as I elected nothing;

Simply to choose stopped all ways up but one,And sent the tease-birds from the bushes flapping.

No future now. I and you now, alone.

He felt that to marry would be to sacrifice 'art' to'life', and destroy his ability to write. A woman mightbe his muse, his poetic inspiration, but not his wife.

The muse relationship appears at its purest in hisrelationship with Winifred Arnott, whom he metwhen he moved to Belfast in 1950. In 'To My Wife'the speaker regrets 'for your face I have exchanged allfaces'. In 'Latest Face', written a few days earlier, thespeaker chooses the birds in the bush rather than thatin the hand. This latest face imposes no guilts orresponsibilities:

Latest face, so effortlessYour great arrival at my eyes,

No one standing near could guessYour beauty had no home till then;

Precious vagrant, recogniseMy look, and do not turn again.

Admirer and admired embraceOn a useless level, where

I contain your current grace,You my judgement; yet to move

Into real untidy airBrings no lasting attribute,

Bargains, suffering and love,Not this always-planned salute.

The lasting attributes of life, 'Bargains, suffering, andlove', are rejected in favour of 'this always-plannedsalute'. Incipience is all. Larkin's actual relationshipwith Winifred was simply a passing friendship withno physical intimacy. The intensity lies in hisaesthetic, poetic response.

For almost all of the 1950s it seemed that Larkin hadresolved the issue of the two contradictory impulsesin his sensibility. This is Monica's decade. Theyshared a common cultural and literary background,having been exact contemporaries at Oxford, thoughthey never met there. Both achieved first-classdegrees in English. Uniquely among hiscorrespondents, he regularly sent her drafts of hispoems. It was on a winter holiday with Monica inJanuary 1956 that they visited Chichester Cathedral,and saw the earl and countess lying in stone whobecome the subject of 'An Arundel Tomb'. Theambiguous emotion and texture of this poem owesmuch to his feelings for her. The poet denies anysentimental gush about love, while at the same timecontriving to impart the utmost emotional intensity tothis, the most loaded word in the language – and thefinal word of the poem:

Time has transfigured them into

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love.

The contradiction between intensely poignantyearning and hard reality is as explicit as possible.The brisk afterthought in the workbook bears themark of Monica's acerbic intelligence: 'Love isn'tstronger than death just because statues hold handsfor 600 years'. Appropriately his first volume of

mature poetry, the resonantly titled The LessDeceived, published in 1955, was dedicated 'ToMonica Jones'.

This relatively stable and harmonious if long-distancearrangement began to come under strain in late 1959.Both Monica's parents suddenly died within weeks ofeach other, and the bleakness of her depression isreflected in 'Talking in Bed', the date of which,August 1960, suggests strongly that it is ananniversary poem, marking ten years since thecouple first slept together. The subject is the plight ofmarriage as Larkin had defined it in 'To My Wife', andthis is the bleakest of all love poems:

Nothing shows whyAt this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to findWords at once true and kind,Or not untrue and not unkind.

This poem marks the end of the first, happier phase inLarkin's relationship with Monica. By this time hehad already come to know Maeve Brennan, a LibraryAssistant in Hull when he arrived there in 1955.Though their relationship remained physicallyunconsummated, Philip and Maeve becameemotionally intimate as he coached her for herLibrarianship exams. It must have been partly toescape this crisis in his affections that he applied in1960 for a post in Reading University. However hereturned to Hull in a state of turmoil withoutattending the interview. Then, in April 1961 hesuffered a mysterious physical breakdown and wassent to London for tests. No cause was everdiagnosed. He joked in a letter to Maeve: 'Do youthink this ailment I am undergoing is God's way ofputting a stop to something He thought might begetting out of hand?' (Brennan, The Philip Larkin IKnew, MUP 2002, 75).

The next few years saw the poet locked in thisuncomfortable triangle, declaring his love to Maevein Hull while denying the closeness of therelationship to Monica in Leicester. In Larkin's poemsassociated with Maeve, the Muse pattern reassertsitself. Larkin lugubriously commented that

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'Broadcast' (1961) 'seems to be about as near as Iget… to a love poem. It's not, I'm afraid, very near'(The Whitsun Weddings', Listen Records, The MarvellPress, 1965). His repeated stress on distance ('aboutas near', 'not very near') sounds odd, and echoes thedistance within the poem between the lover and hisbeloved. She is lost in the crowd in the darkenedauditorium; he is solitary in his darkened flat listeningto the same concert on the radio.

I think of your face among all those faces,

Beautiful and devout beforeCascades of monumental slithering,

One of your gloves unnoticed on the floorBeside those new, slightly-outmoded shoes.

Here it goes quickly dark. I lose

All but the outline of the still and witheringLeaves on half-emptied trees.

She embodies the commonplace life he loves, butshe is also out of reach, unaware of him:

BehindThe glowing wavebands, rabid storms of chording

By being distant overpower my mind

All the more shamelessly, their cut-off shout

Leaving me desperate to pick out

Your hands, tiny in all that air, applauding.

Through a concealed pun on the phrase 'on air', 'realuntidy air' becomes elevated through its transmissionacross the radio waves onto a poetic, 'useless level'.

Maeve played a key role in softening the abrasiveironies of Larkin's 'less deceived' phase. He toldMonica: 'When I am most myself, then you are there'(Motion 369). Maeve, in contrast, drew him out ofhimself. He told her: 'you have taught me more aboutmy emotions than anyone'. He called The WhitsunWeddings 'her book', and in the poem 'The WhitsunWeddings', written in 1958, he embraces thecommonplace provincial hopes and ambitions ofpeople like Maeve. From the safe redoubt of hisrailway carriage he watches life in all its beautiful

ordinariness: 'mothers loud and fat; / An uncleshouting smut; and then the perms, / The nylon glovesand jewelry-substitutes, / The lemons, mauves, andolive-ochres that // Marked off the girls unreally fromthe rest'. The poetic power of the work depends verymuch on his detached artistic viewpoint:

– An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,And someone running up to bowl – and noneThought of the others they would never meet

Or how their lives would all contain this hour.I thought of London spread out in the sun,

Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat…

The couples are choosing life; he still chooses art.

There is an archetypal quality about the two women'sresponses to the poet. Following Larkin's deathMaeve, the uncomprehending Muse, discovered forthe first time that he commonly used four letter wordsand had a liking for pornography. She felt moraldisillusion: 'He had feet of clay, didn't he? Huge feetof clay'. The reaction of Monica Jones, the tragic'Wife', was more simply emotional: 'He lied to me,the bugger, but I loved him' (Motion 307; 310-11).Maeve subsequently softened her view and, likeWinifred, enjoyed a late legacy from the poet in theform of her rôle as Vice-Chairman of the Philip LarkinSociety, and the success of her memoir, The PhilipLarkin I Knew. Monica remained a sad recluse untilher death in 2001. She had no illusions to beshattered, but, whatever Philip's faults, she could notbear to be without him.

Volume 103 • 2009 7


THEATRICALS IN A QUIET LIFE


Professor Richard Foulkes, Professor of Theatre History, School of English,

University of Leicester

Lecture delivered on 3 November 2008.

Lewis Carroll was fascinated by all aspects of the theatre throughout his life. His father the Revd Dodgson,like any Victorian clergymen, banned his family from attending professional theatrical performances. He didhowever tolerate charades, home theatricals and a puppet theatre in which Carroll delighted well into histwenties. These pastimes were typical of the family’s social position and the expansion of leisure in the period.


8 Volume 103 • 2009

When on 22 June 1855, aged twenty-three, Dodgsonattended his first play, Henry VIII, at the Princess’sTheatre he was enchanted and lost little time inreturning. From then on until just weeks before hisdeath in January 1898 he was a regular andenthusiastic theatre-goer attending nearly fivehundred times, visits that he recorded in his diary andin numerous letters. These are valuable, but hithertoneglected, sources for theatre historians. Carroll’stastes were not adventurous, he liked pantomime,opera bouffe, Gilbert and Sullivan, Wilson Barrett,M.Barrie and the Terry family, but he avoided Shaw,Wilde and Ibsen. Overall his tastes were prettymainstream for the day, reflecting the return of themiddle classes to the theatre.

Of course as well as being typical Carroll was alsounique: an Oxford mathematics don, a pioneerphotographer and the author of the Alice books. Assuch he befriended many child actresses and took aclose interest in their careers and welfare, helped thedaughters of friends enter the theatrical professionand contributed to the debate on children working intheatre. When, in 1887, the Alice books wereeventually dramatised he involved imself in thepracticalities and took a close interest in the castingespecially of Alice.

A shy man Carroll clearly found that the theatre wasa way of engaging with the more expressive side ofhis personality whether as a performer (of sixcharacters) in his ‘reading’ of one act plays such asDone Brown or as the family friend of the Terrys, theCootes and the Sinclairs.

The theatre is a fleeting art leaving, as Prospero says,‘not a rack behind’, but through his photographicskills Carroll created enduring images of favouriteperformers of the days, notably the Terry family.

The theatre undoubtedly enriched Carroll’s lifeimmeasurably and his interest in it similarly enrichesour understanding of him and our appreciation ofVictorian theatre.

Richard Foulkes is the author of several books onthe Victorian theatre including Church and Stagein Victorian England (Cambridge UP 1997) andPerforming Shakespeare in the Age of Empire(Cambridge UP 2002).

His interest in Lewis Carroll originated in 1998,the centenary of Carroll’s death, and his bookLewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage Theatricalsin a Quiet Life was published by Ashgate in2005. Since then he has explored further aspectsof Carroll’s involvement with theatre with apaper entitled ‘In the Looking-Glass LewisCarroll’s Reflections on Victorian Actresses’ andan essay on Lewis Carroll and the pantomime.

ERNEST GIMSON: ARCHETYPAL ARTS ANDCRAFTS DESIGNER

Mrs Mary Greensted

Curator of “Craft and design: Ernest Gimson and the Arts and CraftsMovement” exhibition at New Walk Museum, Leicester

Lecture delivered on 17 November 2008Partnership lecture with New Walk Museum

Introduction to the Arts and Crafts Movement

The Arts and Crafts Movement was one of the most important and influential art movements to emerge fromEngland. I want to look at the Movement in the context of the work of the architect and designer, ErnestGimson. I hope to show that some of the ideas behind the Movement itself remain relevant as we movethrough the twenty-first century.

Early Victorians had believed that material progress would ensure happiness but by the 1880s this convictionwas widely challenged. Religious certainties were threatened by the writings of Charles Darwin. Agriculturalproduction was in decline while a new group of urban middlemen were profiting from industrial production.The term ‘unemployment' entered the vocabulary and a series of exposés brought the grim living conditionsin London’s East End into the public domain.

The writings of John Ruskin and Morris as well as earlier commentators inspired the generation born in the1850s and ‘60s which challenged the belief in continuous commercial expansion and tried to work out positivealternatives. The most important and influential of these became known as the Arts and Crafts Movementwhich allied social and political issues to artistic endeavour.


Volume 103 • 2009 9

Ernest Gimson

Ernest Gimson was born in 1864 in Leicester. TheGimson family fortunes mirrored the expansion of thecity in the nineteenth century. His grandfather hadbeen a carpenter. Gimson’s father, Josiah, worked asan iron founder before setting up his own engineeringfactory making heavy machinery. He had a sense ofcivic duty as well as a strong social conscience. Hedied in 1883 when Ernest was eighteen and thebusiness was subsequently managed by his three eldersons leaving Ernest Gimson, his youngest son, wasfree to make his own choice of career and he wasarticled to Isaac Barradale, a local architect.

In January 1884 a momentous event took place inErnest’s life: William Morris visited Leicester to talk on‘Art and Socialism’. As leading members of theLeicester Secular Society which had issued theinvitation, Ernest and his elder brother, Sydney, wereresponsible for looking after the great man. He was

entertained that evening at the family home in NewWalk. Following the spirited conversation that wenton until 2am, Gimson was encouraged to completehis architectural training in London and he was givenletters of introduction by Morris. In March 1886Gimson moved to London to join the architecturaloffice of John Sedding.

Sedding provided a sound grounding in architecturaldrawing and building techniques but his studentswere also encouraged to visit museums, to sketch andto appreciate craftsmanship. Gimson sought first-handexperience of craftwork. He talked to traditionalcraftsmen such as thatchers, observed them at workand drew their tools. He also spent some weeks in1890 with Philip Clissett, a chair-maker inHerefordshire, learning the basics of that craft.

Towards the end of 1890 Gimson and his closefriends, William Lethaby and Sidney Barnsley, set upKenton and Company with two other architects. They


10 Volume 103 • 2009

wanted to produce furniture which they had designedand arranged for it to be made by trained cabinet-makers. Each piece of furniture was marked with thename of the maker and initials of the designer in thespirit of the Arts and Crafts Movement. There was nohouse style; it was a venture set up by young talentedindividuals at the start of their careers. It was alsoshort-lived, possibly for this very reason, and in thespring of 1893 Ernest Gimson and Sidney Barnsleygave up professional careers as architects in London inan attempt to carve out a new way of life in theCotswolds.

They hoped that by living in the country they wouldget closer to Nature; they would get to know aparticular locality, its craft traditions and buildingmethods, the raw materials available, and above allthat they would be able to become physicallyinvolved in all the processes of building instead ofspending their working lives at a drawing board in anoffice. Ernest Barnsley, Sidney’s elder brother, gave uphis newly-established architectural practice inBirmingham to join them.

Gimson as a designer

1n 1900, in partnership with Ernest Barnsley, Gimsontook over Daneway House as showrooms andworkshops. It was here in the early years of thetwentieth century that Gimson emerged as a majordesigner. Four elements in his work ensured hisreputation as the archetypal Arts and Crafts designer

• His emphasis on craftsmanship and handwork

• The provision of useful and creative employment

• The careful but imaginative choice of materialsand techniques

• His approach to design and decoration

Like William Morris, Gimson believed in the value ofhandwork – for society as a whole, for the consumerbut above all for the maker. This was a core belief forhim and for many of those involved in the Arts andCrafts Movement. He ran craft workshops partly toprovide both training and creative rewarding work forhis workforce.

A skilled craftsman from Holland, Peter Waals, wasappointed as foreman/manager. In 1904 Ernest Smithjoined the Daneway workshops. As a young man inthe 1890s, Smith followed his father into the London

furniture trade making wardrobes on piece rate. Hereplied to an advertisement for cabinet-makers in thecountry because it offered him an opportunity to getout of London. Smith subsequently acknowledged theextent to which his way of working had changed; hewas no longer expected to cut corners and to do thework as cheaply as possible. He wasn’t able to hideany faults. The quality of workmanship was a source ofpersonal satisfaction and pride.

Ernest Smith subsequently recalled conversationsabout inlaid work. On a cabinet with decorative inlay,the stalks of flowers were stiff. Gimson said it wasmade out of wood, a hard material, and he didn’tattempt to make wavy stalks. Like many Arts andCrafts designers he emphasised the importance ofdrawing from nature, capturing the essence of theplant or flower but then adapting the design to suit themedium it was intended for.

In The Stones of Venice John Ruskin had highlightedthe Byzantine influence on that city. As anarchitectural student, Gimson followed in Ruskin’sfootsteps travelling to Venice, Torcello, Ravenna, etc.He also acquired photographs of Byzantine textilesand Indian inlaid boxes from the South KensingtonMuseum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). Thisexotic source material together with examples ofseventeenth- and early eighteenth-century work andtraditional craftsmanship inspired his designs.

By 1912 the workshop was flourishing, employingnine woodworkers ranging from skilled cabinet makersto local apprentices. There were also three blacksmithsworking for Gimson and three or four chair-makers.His work was widely featured in periodicals in thiscountry and abroad. Regrettably many Arts and Craftsdesigners were disheartened by their lack of influencein the marketplace as the movement had not made asignificant impact on manufacturing industry, whereasin Germany and Austria designers had takeninspiration from Britain and developed successfulpartnerships with industry.

The Design and Industries Association (DIA) was set upin 1916, during the First World War, to reinvigorateBritish design. One of the protagonists, WilliamLethaby, was keen to persuade Gimson, his old friendand former colleague, to become involved indesigning furniture that could be produced by othersfor a mass market. Gimson recognised that only a very

THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE

Professor Jack Meadows, FRS Emeritus Professor, Department of Information Science,

University of Loughborough

Delivered on 1 December 2008Sponsored by the British Association for the Advancement of Science

Predicting the future is trickier than analysing the past. Yet the two go together - in the sense that discussionsof the future are typically based on extrapolations from the past. One virtue of forecasting in astronomy is thatthe timescales are sufficiently extended for predictions to have been long forgotten before they come tofruition. Another is that the large distances involved actually make surveying the past of the universe an easiertask, and so help in predicting the future. The point is that light travels at a finite speed. Consequently, we seeobjects not as they are now, but as they were when their light first started out. Light from the nearest star takesaround four years to reach us. This is equivalent to saying that the star is four light-years away from us, or thatwe see it as it was four years ago. We can imagine that we are surrounded by a series of shells, each containingobjects at a similar distance away. Depending on which shell you look at, their light may take a thousand, amillion or a billion light years to reach us and, correspondingly, we are seeing the objects as they were thatnumber of years ago. This considerably helps studying the past of the universe, and so extrapolating to itsfuture.


Volume 103 • 2009 11

limited section of the population could afford his workbut was also aware that Waals and the cabinet makershad very high standards which gave them fulfilmentfrom their work. He wrote ‘What of the lifetime of theworker? Is he to be doing less than his best in orderthat someone may get a cheap article which may ormay not interest him afterwards.’

Gimson developed plans for a large craft communityin the Cotswolds based on architecture and thebuilding crafts. He bought a plot of land nearSapperton and early in 1919 he negotiated withindustrialists and businessmen for financial backingbut his plans were cut short by illness and he died laterthat year.

His influence survived through his foreman, PeterWaals, whose workshop survived until 1938. Waalswas appointed Designer Adviser at LoughboroughTraining College where he and his successor asDesigner Adviser Edward Barnsley, the furniture-

making son of Sidney Barnsley, had a tremendousimpact on several generations of handicraft teachersthrough to the 1950s. Craft furniture makers such asJohn Makepeace and Alan Peters and designers suchas Gordon Russell and Terence Conran haveacknowledged the influence of Gimson and the Artsand Crafts Movement had on their work.

Conclusion

Ernest Gimson felt that artistic and economicarguments about Britain’s role as a design leader andproducer ignored the human element. Was he runninga workshop to produce cheap furniture that might bediscarded after a short time or was he providing hiscraftsmen with creative satisfying work? His reasoningcame back again and again to the satisfaction of theindividual worker. In many ways these arguments havecontinued to the present day as we face environmentalissues, sustainable production, the growth ofconsumerism and the search for a life/work balance.

The Sun

Discussing the future essentially involves looking at thevarious types of objects to be found in space andasking how they will change with time. I will look attwo specific objects - the Sun and the Earth - and thenat the future of the universe as whole. The Sun comesfirst because it dominates the solar system. Take awaythe Sun, and the Earth would be vastly affected; takeaway the Earth, and the Sun would not even notice.The basic question to ask about the Sun is - where doesall its energy come from? The Sun produces anenormous amount of energy each second: a fewsquare metres of the Sun's surface emits enough toprovide for all the energy needs of Leicester. There isonly one known source of energy that can produce thisamount - nuclear fusion. Down in the deep interior ofthe Sun, hydrogen is being converted into helium,producing energy in the process. As Einstein's famousequation E=mc2 tells us, converting a small amount ofmass can produce large amounts of energy. The Sunbeing a massive star, has a plentiful supply of hydrogento burn for a long time ahead. There is good evidencethat the Sun has already been converting hydrogen inits interior for some 4.5 billion years [where one billionequals a thousand million]. Current estimates suggestthat it has enough hydrogen left to last for another sixbillion years. During this period of over ten billionyears, the Sun changes only very slowly, mainly bygradually becoming a little brighter.

The drama starts when the Sun has used up its supplyof hydrogen. It must get its energy from somewhere, sothe interior heats up until the helium there startscombining with itself to form carbon. At this stage theSun will expand dramatically in size, becoming a redgiant star. At its greatest extent, it will extend out toabout the Earth's orbit. Although the Sun can lastseveral hundred million years in this state, it is actuallyunstable, and continually sheds material into space.When all the helium has been burnt, the Sun findsitself in a dilemma, for it has no further fuel to burn. Itsuccumbs to the inevitable and collapses into what isessentially a solid ball - a very dense ball, because itpacks what is left of the Sun into a volume about thesame as the Earth's. Such a ball is known as a whitedwarf. This cools down slowly, losing its heat until itbecomes, eventually, a black dwarf. Since the remnantSun consists mainly of carbon, we end with a'diamond' in the sky. However, it will be many billionyears in the future before it reaches that state.

The Earth

An obvious question is - what happens to the Earthwhen the Sun extends out to its orbit? The probableanswer is that it will survive. Because the Sun is thenlosing material, its hold on the planets is less strong, sothe Earth will have moved out to a more distant orbit.But this is six billion years in the future, by which timeother things will have happened to the Earth. Thedevelopments of most consequence to its humaninhabitants relate to the surface of the Earth (rather thanits interior) along with the atmosphere and oceans. Thesurface of the Earth is mobile, meaning that differentareas (called 'plates') move about relative to each other- rather like a mobile giant jigsaw. At the moment, thejigsaw has most of the continents fairly well separatedfrom each other. But the prediction is that some 200million years from now they will probably all becoming together into a single supercontinent. This willbreak up, in turn, to form a new array of continents.

The main inconvenience of this is likely to be thechanges in climate that will accompany suchgeographical shuffling. But there are more importantquestions about climate to be expected. The'greenhouse effect' has now become a well-knownphrase. In essence, light rays from the Sun areabsorbed by the Earth’s surface, and reradiated as heat.The atmosphere allows incoming light to pass throughfairly easily, but it blocks heat radiation from passingback out again. (The blocking effect is due to gases inthe atmosphere - particularly carbon dioxide andwater vapour - which absorb heat radiation.) As aresult, the surface temperature of the Earth rises. This is,in fact, a beneficial outcome. Without the extra heatfrom the greenhouse effect, the surface temperaturewould be below the freezing point of water, and all theoceans would be frozen. Nowadays we mostly hearabout the problems caused by the impact of humanactivities on the atmosphere, which increase thegreenhouse effect, and so the surface temperature ofthe Earth. In terms of the long-term future our currentproblems are probably no more than a little localdifficulty. There seems no reason why the atmosphereand oceans should not survive in a form acceptable tohuman beings for another billion years or so. After that,things become more difficult. We have seen that theSun gradually gets brighter and hotter as time passes.Consequently, the Earth receives more radiation and itssurface temperature increases. This means that morewater evaporates from the oceans: the extra water

12 Volume 103 • 2009


vapour increases the greenhouse effect, which, in turn,raises the surface temperature. At some stage, thisprocess will run away until all the oceans haveevaporated, by which time the greenhouse effect willhave raised the surface temperature to some 1,000°C.Life on Earth will have disappeared.

Few people are likely to worry about what will happena billion years in the future. But for those living onEarth there may be problems before then. The solarsystem contains many small objects orbiting the Sunwhose paths may occasionally intersect the Earth’s. Anexample is the Barwell meteorite, which fell inLeicestershire some forty years ago. The parent body ofthe Barwell meteorite was probably only a few metresacross, and the fall of the meteorite caused littledamage. Larger bodies do exist: it has been estimatedthat bodies a hundred metres across may hit the Earthevery thousand years or so. A body of this size not onlycreates a crater on impact, the blast waves it producescan affect a large area roundabout. If such an objectfell on Leicester, people in the county might well beworried, as well as those in Leicester itself. On rareoccasions, even larger bodies may hit the Earth,creating world-wide devastation. Such events areestimated to occur about once every 25 million years.To put it another way, there may be over a hundredsuch catastrophic events before the runawaygreenhouse effect makes the world uninhabitable.Although the exact timings of both impacts and long-term global warming cannot be certain, the likelihoodthat they will occur is strong. One definition of anoptimist - an optimist is someone who believes that thefuture is uncertain.

The Universe

The basic building block of the universe is the galaxy,or, more accurately, a cluster of galaxies. Our ownGalaxy [distinguished by a capital 'G'] is a part of acluster cosily known as the 'Local Group', whichincludes all galaxies within about 4 million light-yearsof us. Our Galaxy and another, known as theAndromeda galaxy - both spiral in form - are by someway the two largest galaxies in the Local Group. Thismeans that their gravitational attractions dominatewithin the Group, to the extent that they are currentlymoving towards each other at a speed of a fewhundred kilometres per second. If they keep going thisway, they may well collide in some 3 billion yearstime. The results of such a collision will be spectacular.

The two galaxies will mix together and end up as anentirely different type of galaxy - an elliptical galaxy.Where the Sun will find itself is uncertain, though theodds are that it will survive the encounter. Rememberthat this can occur while the Sun is still an ordinarystar, well before the red giant stage.

As things go, the Local Group, with a few tens ofmember galaxies, is small-scale stuff. There are plentyof clusters of galaxies that contain hundreds, or eventhousands of galaxies.. These clusters of galaxies canattract each other to form a supercluster. The LocalGroup belongs to a supercluster containing somehundred clusters of galaxies within it, referred to,inevitably, as the Local Supercluster (though onlyastronomers would apply the word 'local' to an entitysome 160 million light-years across). Just as thegalaxies within a cluster attract each other, leading tocollisions, so the clusters of galaxies attract each other.However, a new factor comes into play here - theexpansion of the universe. This leads to the clusters ofgalaxies within a supercluster drifting apart. So, thougha cluster like the Local Group is stable, the odds arethat it will see its neighbouring clusters graduallydrifting away. From this perspective, the future isessentially downhill. The Local Group will eventuallyform, after further collisions, a single galaxy. The starsin that galaxy will ultimately fade away –over manytrillion years - and we will be left alone and isolated inuniversal darkness.

This all presumes that we now have a full picture of theuniverse, which is almost certainly untrue. In the lastfew decades, it has become clear that there must be agreat deal of material in the universe - dark matter as itis called - about which we know very little. Morerecently, it has been observed that the universecontains vast amounts of energy - called,correspondingly, dark energy - about which we knoweven less. I would guess that, in fifty years from now,our view of the future of the Sun will not have changedvastly; our view of the Earth may have undergonesignificant change; our view of the universe will almostcertainly have changed dramatically. As Einsteinremarked: 'Two things are infinite: the universe andhuman stupidity; and I am not sure about the universe'.

Background material on the matters discussed herecan be found in my book The future of the universe[Springer; 2007], which also suggests websites tosearch for more recent information.

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If you heat the tube more slowly, the liquid begins tolook opalescent as it approaches its critical point. Asthe opalescence increases it grows redder and darkerand, if you have judged things really well, goescompletely black. At the critical point, it becomesperfectly reflecting and you see your own eye staringback at you. Heat it a bit more and the fluid passesback through red to become completely transparentagain. Now, perhaps you see why supercritical fluids(SCFs) have fascinated people for so long. A puresubstance in a sealed tube turns black merelybecause of a tiny increase in temperature — in somecases an increase as small as one-hundredth of adegree.

Opalescence arises because the compressibility ofthe fluid at the critical point is infinitely high. Whenthis happens the microscopic thermal fluctuationsthat occur naturally in any fluid become strongly

correlated, leading to large-scale, coherent densityfluctuations. These large density fluctuations are veryeffective at scattering light. The high compressibilityand the correlated fluctuations also cause the speedof sound to drop to a minimum as the fluid passesthrough the critical point and the fluctuationsattenuate the sound. In 1822, these acoustic effectswere exploited unwittingly by Cagniard de la Tourwhen he heated alcohol in a sealed gun barrel andlistened to the musket ball rolling about. Acousticmeasurements are still important for studying SCFs:we have been using them to locate the critical pointsof chemical reaction mixtures.

The whole tube is now filled with a supercritical fluidof uniform density. Technically it's a gas, but it retainssome properties of a liquid, including the ability todissolve many solids. The idea that solids can dissolvein gas is so surprising to some scientists that, on firsthearing of it, they fondly imagine that SCFs mightdissolve substances that generations of chemists hadfailed to get into solution. In reality, supercritical CO2(scCO2), the most common SCF, has a solvent powersimilar to that of petrol — although it does have theunusual ability to dissolve fluorinated organiccompounds.

In recent years, industries have used SCFs,particularly scCO2, as solvents for applicationsranging from the extraction of caffeine, scents andessences to the degreasing of machine components.

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PHENOMENAL FLUIDS

Professor Martyn Poliakoff, FRSSchool of Chemistry, University of Nottingham

Delivered on12 January 2009Sponsored by the Royal Society of ChemistrySummary by Martyn Poliakoff and Peter King

Heat a liquid in a sealed tube; it seems a simple enough experiment. But it has intrigued chemists andphysicists for over 175 years, probably because the results are unexpected, almost counterintuitive.

What you see depends on how much liquid is in the tube. If the tube is almost empty, the liquid evaporatesquickly and you are left with a gas at moderate pressure. If it's almost full, the liquid expands rapidly to fillthe whole tube and the pressure rises alarmingly. Put in just the right amount, and the meniscus grows faintand disappears abruptly: the contents of this tube have passed through the 'critical point' and become'supercritical'.

The handy thing is that the solubility of manycompounds in CO2 changes markedly near thecritical point. Lower the temperature or pressureby a small amount and it may well startsnowing caffeine or even grease, and the CO2can be re-used or released back into theatmosphere.

There is increasing interest in SCFs, particularlyscCO2, as environmentally acceptable solventsfor chemical reactions. But SCFs are attractiveto chemists for reasons other thanenvironmental friendliness. SCFs can providereaction conditions that may lead to enhancedrates or alternative reaction pathways to thoseoffered by conventional solvents. Supercriticalwater is so reactive that materials ranging frompaint-shop waste to nerve-gas weapons arerapidly converted into a few harmless oxides,water and CO2. In many cases, reactionproducts may be extracted by making tinyreductions in pressure or temperature.

Chemical reactions involve mixtures, and the criticalbehaviour of mixtures may be far more complicatedthan that of a pure substance, with two or more liquidphases as well as the gas phase. The challenge incontrolling the reaction often lies in characterizingand using this complex behaviour. Strictly speaking,

the critical point of a mixture is reached when theliquid and gas phases coalesce and the densities of

the two phases are equal at the moment ofcoalescence. In practice, any homogeneousmixture at a temperature above the criticalpoint of the pure solvent is termed'supercritical'.

Returning to the sealed tube, what happens whenour simple SCF is rapidly cooled? While it is

supercritical, the fluid has a uniform density inthe tube; therefore, as it cools through thecritical point and separates into two phases,gas bubbles and liquid droplets form with

equal probability throughout the tube. Thedroplets begin to fall and the bubbles rise. A

veritable storm erupts — quite different fromthe gradual disappearance of the meniscuswhen the liquid is heated. In short, a secondbeautiful phenomenon for the price of one!

FURTHER READING

McHugh, M. A. & Krukonis, V. J. Supercritical FluidExtraction (Butterworth-Heinmann, Boston, 1994).

Jessop, P. G. & Leitner, W. (eds) Chemical Synthesis UsingSupercritical Fluids (Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 1999).

Noyori, R. (ed.) Chemical Reviews 99, no. 2 (1999).

Adam, D. Nature 407, 938 (2000).

WEBLINK

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/supercritical

Volume 103 • 2009 15


Critical conditions: above, phase diagram for a pure substanceshowing the critical pressure,Pc, and temperature,Tc.Above

right, the effect of heating CO2 rapidly through the criticalpoint from liquid (top) to supercriticality (bottom).

GRAVE SECRETS OF DINOSAURS

Dr Philip ManningLecturer in Vertebrate Palaeontology and Evolution

University of Manchester

Delivered on 26 January 2009Joint Lecture with the Geology Section

Two years ago Dr Manning was contacted by Tyler Lyson about a new dinosaur find. Lyson had found the fossilremains of a dinosaur. When Dr Manning saw the fossil remains for the first time, they both knew they had ananimal that could change the way dinosaurs were viewed. This was a dinosaur mummy!

The nuts and bolts of science were deployed to piece together the evidence of a past life.

Drawing upon the cutting edge techniques developed by the team, Manning gave a chronological tour of thehandful of dinosaur mummies that have teased the scientific community for 100 years.

In 1908 the first remarkably preserved dinosaur mummy was discovered and excavated by the legendarySternbergs who are paleontological aristocracy in their own right. Discoveries from throughout the world ofdinosaurs with soft-tissue structures increased the knowledge and understanding of these remarkable fossils.

Dr Manning revealed the science behind this new find from the Late Cretaceous Badlands of North Dakota. Hechronicled the progress of the international team of scientists brought together to excavate, record, analyse andinterpret this incredible find.

Manning, P.L. 2008. Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs: soft tissues and hard science. National Geographic Books, WashingtonD.C. (ISBN-10: 1426202199; ISBN-13: 978-1426202193), the book has been published in the USA, Canada and in theUK, 320pp.

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This illustrates the role of the media in failing topromote community cohesion. Parts of the mediahave played an undistinguished role in this fieldbehaving as though they had no responsibility for theimpact of their reporting on local communities.

“Does the media have a role in promotingcommunity cohesion”. The answer is a resoundingyes. What the media print and broadcast affects howpeople feel about other people, other faiths and othercommunities. It is a heavy responsibility which someof us accept whilst others do not. It can be apowerful force for good if it is mobilised andmotivated. It requires a focused effort to besuccessful. To remain passive or indifferent is anegative force.

The Leicester Mercury is one of the country’s largestand most successful regional titles – selling some70,000 copies six days a week. For the past threeyears it has overtaken Birmingham and become thelargest title in the Midlands. It pursues a policy ofresponsible and supportive reporting but retained itsability to make a profit. The newspaper must make asound business case if it is to play a full role increating more cohesive communities.

We sell our newspapers in Leicester which has a non-white population of more than 40%. It will be the firstnon-white majority city in the country statisticalanalyses predicting that it would have a minoritywhite population by 2011.

We also sell in Leicestershire which is a traditionalpart of Middle England with minimal diversity. We

aim to help these varied communities understandeach other better.

The Mercury wants to play a positive role incommunity cohesion. It gained internationalrecognition for its ground-breaking work within theBritish and European media industry The Mercuryhas adopted policies that are appropriate andrelevant to a diverse city. Our achievements were putinto sharper focus by the London bombings in July,2005. The mature and restrained way ourcommunities handled that terrible event and its after-shocks proved that the policies developed inLeicester were working.

The marketplace is changing rapidly. One challengefacing editors today is to acknowledge theaccelerating pace of change. An important change isthe size and significance of different cultural and faithgroups consisting of both third or fourth generationpeople and new arrivals.

Leicester’s population has changed dramatically inthe past 30 years and continues to change becauseof economic migration.. External events modify thedelicate balance that exists which can cause tensionbetween the different race and faith communities.Comparable disturbances to those which disruptedsome British cities some years ago have not beenreflected in Leicester.

The Muslim community, as other Muslimcommunities in Britain, feels isolated and inwardlooking.

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA INPROMOTING COMMUNITY COHESION

Nick Carter Editor, Leicester Mercury

Delivered on 9 February 2009The Leicester Mercury Media Lecture

Islamic 'terror' at Jewish school was a headline from a newspaper near London. It was an unsubstantiatedreport on the newspaper’s website stating that Muslim youths with knives intended to get into the school’sgrounds. They was untrue. The editor apologised adding that they took their responsibility of helping tomaintain harmony in their area.

The poorer and predominantly white council estateswhere people struggle to improve their quality of lifeare beset by perceptions of unfair allocation ofresources. The current economic situation mightincrease feelings of unfairness which could create aplatform for the forces of extremism.

What the Mercury says about the daily lives of thosecommunities is of significance.

These responsibilities mean it works hard to look forthe positive aspects in our communities – particularlywhere they show people from different cultures livingand working together. It does this through newscoverage, planned feature coverage, daily “personalcomment” platforms and through making sure theinterests of a diverse community are reflected in thenewspaper.

This puts more pressure on the newspaper to makeright decisions and to spend more time thinkingabout the consequences of its actions.

So what are the Mercury’ s aims?

• It should be involved with different communitiesto ensure that it understands the issues andconcerns that affect them.

• It should establish proper working relationshipsand regular contact with key organisations tomake life better for their communities.

• It should play a more active role to helpcommunities move towards a better future.

• It should seek to understand in what ways thecontent and reporting style of the newspaper,local television and the local radio station haveon the climate of feeling in those communities.

• It should understand it will be harder for it tomake progress in communities where thecomponent groups are fragmented, frightenedand apprehensive than where people share acommon desire for a better future

• It needs to discover opportunities to make adifference, e.g. getting behind a community’sattempt to improve its circumstances orhighlighting successes in reducing crime.

The Mercury must not act as a mouthpiece for anyone organisation, faith, community or pressuregroup. It is the key means of communication andinformation because of its awareness of how ourcommunities were changing. It has retained abalance and credibility which has enabled it to set upa multi-cultural advisory group. This has proved asuccess and it could form a model for other cities.

Leicester has a history of interracial harmony that hasbeen maintained by positive initiatives and constantvigilance by the City Council, Leicester Council ofFaiths and members of many diverse communities inthe city and county. In the months before the 2001General Election, it became clear that the race cardcould be played nationally with a feared adverseimpact in Leicester. The reporting of such matters andthe city’s response, needed careful handling.

The Mercury called together people representingvarious bodies and communities in Leicester to createan informal discussion group that could provideadvice to local media and form a consensus inresponse to outside events. Twenty people attendedthe first meeting on March 14, 2001. They includedthe leader and chief executive of Leicester CityCouncil and representatives of the police, LeicesterCouncil of Faiths, academics, school principals andgovernors, the local racial equality council, the localBBC and commercial radio and Asian TV in the city.They were there as individuals rather than delegatesaccountable to their organisations.

They discussed the “threats to the continuingdevelopment of a truly multicultural society inLeicester presented by the possible misuse ormisrepresentation of race and related issues in anyforthcoming General Election campaign,” and “toidentify what measures could be taken to counter orlessen the impact of such threats, both in the shortand long term.”

It advised the city council on a request from theNational Front for a St George’s Day march throughLeicester. The city council leader took the adviceproffered and the march was banned. It was amilestone in the creation of a new, more cohesiveidentity for Leicester. The General Election passedwithout incident.

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The group realised that it could provide a valuableservice to community relations both in Leicester andoutside the city. The police and City Council wantedit to continue as a source of informed opinion. Thegroup has met regularly since and is now anunofficial monitoring body for community cohesionin Leicester. It has tackled obstacles to cohesion. Itsmembership now includes representatives of youthgroups, the city’s growing Somali community and theCounty Council. The group has also attracted officersfrom the successful local young people’sorganisation, Youth Voice, as permanent members.Visitors have included members of the WorldParliament of Faiths.

The group’s greatest strength has been to speakplainly in an atmosphere of trust without having tojustify themselves to the outside bodies theyrepresent.

The Group formulated a Leicester Declaration whichwas used at local government elections in 2003 and2007. Party leaders were invited to sign anagreement, based on the Commission for RacialEquality guidelines pledging themselves and theirparties to promoting good race relations. Nowextremist parties would not be welcome in Leicesterand Leicestershire. At the last General Election onlythe more extreme parties refused to sign.

The work of this group is now recognised in Europe.We are one of 30 initiatives selected from 150nominations as examples of good practice in theEuropean Community.

In the aftermath of the bombings in London it wasanticipated that media attention would focus on theMuslim communities in the country. The Leicestercommunity and its authorities feared retaliatoryattacks, civil disturbance and even mass violence.

The Mercury provided a platform for representativesof all the area’s faiths to condemn the attacks and itemphasised that the police deal severely with thosewho retaliated.

The multicultural advisory group and the Mercurypromoted the idea of a peace rally suggested byLeicester Muslim organisations. Its success proved animportant step on the road to greater understanding.

In the future progress must be on two fronts. The firstis to persuade local editors that they must develop anunderstanding of their communities and promote andnurture their cohesion. This understanding can beachieved by discussion and persuasion not coercion..Secondly local organisations already involved incommunity cohesion issues – such as localauthorities and police - must be receptive to theseapproaches.

The local newspaper must have good workingrelationships with the organisations involved. This isa key learning point if the creation of a multi-culturaladvisory group is to be achieved.

This maturity of approach will allow newspapers tofulfil their role as public watchdog whilst doingpositive work for the greater good of our community.

2009 is going to be a challenging year. Experiencedcommentators like Ted Cantle and Trevor Philips havehighlighted some of the dangers as economicconditions worsen. The Leicester multiculturaladvisory group has already started to develop anoutline strategy in response to the economic crisis,gathering information from those areas likely to bebadly affected, to anticipate or avert problems.

John Chapman rented 142 Strand in July 1847. Themove brought him to the heart of London’s west end,and to the city’s longest street and its main east-westthoroughfare. 142 Strand stands on the south side,nine houses to the west of Somerset House at theFleet Street end of the street. In 1847 the Strand wasLondon’s foremost shopping street; here wereshoemakers, watchmakers, tailors, wax chandlers,tobacconists, umbrella makers, cutlers, linen drapers,pianoforte makers, hatmakers, wigmakers,shirtmakers, mapmakers, lozenge manufacturers, andsellers of food of all sorts, including shellfish, Italianoil, and Twining’s famous tea, sold at number 216,near Temple Bar. Chapman lived a respectable butunconventional life, keeping a lover at 142 Strand inaddition to his wife and children, but he workedhard, loved his children (if not his wife), and tookhimself seriously as a radical thinker and enabler.

Marian Evans at 142 Strand in 1851

Spring 1850 saw Marian Evans back in England aftera journey to Geneva following her father’s death, butstill unsure what to do and where to go. She spentsome weeks living with each of her married siblingsin the Midlands. Her brother Isaac, the model for theunforgiving Tom Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, was

hostile. He was embarrassed and irritated by hisyounger sister’s religious unorthodoxy, intellectualprecocity, and general desire to be independent.Marian felt constrained in his household, and asked aLondon friend to find out what Chapman charged forlodgings at 142 Strand. She knew Chapman fromseveral visits he had paid to her friends Charles andCara Bray in Coventry, and he had published hertranslation of David Friedrich Strauss’s sceptical Lifeof Jesus in 1846. She took up residence at number142 in January 1851. Chapman was negotiating tobuy the Westminster Review, and it was agreed thatMarian would be his editorial assistant.

1851 was probably the most important year in the lifeof both Chapman and Marian Evans. He bought theWestminster Review and gathered round him anextraordinarily talented group of writers; she gainedwriting and editing experience which provedinvaluable for her later career as a novelist, as well asextending her social circle beyond that of the Braysand meeting, through Chapman, G. H. Lewes, theman with whom she would share her life.

It happens that Chapman’s diary for 1851 survives.1

The entry for 1 January 1851 refers to thewretchedness he has suffered through his ‘affections’

20 Volume 103 • 2009


GLIMPSES OF LIFE AT 142 STRAND IN THE 1850s

Professor Rosemary Ashton OBE Quain Professor of English Language and Literature,

University College London

Lecture delivered 23 February 2009Sponsored by De Montfort University

Rosemary Ashton’s lecture, adapted from her recent book, 142 Strand: A Radical Address in Victorian London(Chatto, 2006; paperback edition Vintage, 2008), demonstrated the importance of a little-known publisher,John Chapman, in the personal and professional lives of a number of Victorian writers and thinkers who begantheir literary careers with Chapman, writing for his radical quarterly periodical, the Westminster Review, inthe early 1850s. Some lodged in Chapman’s large house at 142 Strand; others attended soirees there andvisited Chapman’s publishing and bookselling business on the ground floor of the building. Chapmanpublished books which were radical or unorthodox in philosophy, religion, science, or politics, and hegathered round him a number of remarkable writers, from established authors like Carlyle, Thackeray, andDickens, to those who were yet to make their mark, and whom Chapman would help launch their writingcareers. These included Herbert Spencer, Thomas Henry Huxley, George Henry Lewes, and, most significantly,Marian Evans, who would write novels under the pseudonym George Eliot.

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and the regret that ‘in the very vigour of mymanhood’ – he would be thirty in June 1851 – he hadfailed to become a better man. His wife Susanna –nearly fourteen years his senior - is mentioned innegative terms throughout the diary. She is said to beconventional in her religious views, unfairly jealousof the children’s governess and Chapman’s mistressElisabeth Tilley, and now of Marian Evans too.

Chapman did not love his wife; he did not believethat unhappy marriages should be indissoluble,though the law decreed so. His simple solution wasto follow his own desires with Elisabeth (and in 1859with another young woman, Johanna vonHeyligenstaedt), and to promote, in his publicationsand in the Westminster Review, advanced opinionson marriage as on other subjects. He eventuallyparted from Susanna in 1863 and lived in Paris from1874 with a second ‘Mrs Chapman’2. For the timebeing, though, he lived at 142 Strand with Susanna,his children Beatrice and Ernest, some clerks, andseveral paying guests, with Elisabeth acting asgoverness to the children and housekeeper to theestablishment.

A few of Chapman’s circle knew of the unorthodoxarrangement, but most did not. Marian Evans,however, entering the household in January 1851,soon became aware of the sexual tensions and foundherself adding to them before long. This sociallygauche young woman of thirty-one quickly upset thefragile balance of the household by falling forChapman’s charms. Chapman played one woman offagainst the other, with Susanna siding on the wholewith Elisabeth as the devil she knew. There were tiffsand arguments about the piano Chapman helpedMarian to choose, especially as he was soonspending hours in her room listening to her playMozart. Then he began to take German lessons fromher, which caused an outburst from Elisabeth.Marian returned to Coventry to stay with the Brayswhile Chapman worked at persuading Susanna andElisabeth to accept her return to the Strand in theautumn as his assistant on the Westminster Review.

Marian’s role as (anonymous) editor brought her intocontact with all the progressive writers of themetropolis. Though she was in a sense only abackroom figure, her intellectual command of a widerange of subjects soon won her the respect andadmiration of people – mainly men – far more

prominent than she was at the time. Her stay at 142Strand launched her career; though her novel-writingwas not to begin for another five years, theunconscious preparation for it began with her shrewdaccounts to the Brays of human nature as sheencountered it in London and with the articles shewrote for the Westminster Review. Chapman couldnot have managed without her. His negotiations withsubscribers to the Review, his continuing publishingbusiness, and the large amount of visiting which heundertook in the interests of both concerns, not tomention his love of socialising for its own sake,would have defeated even a man of Chapman’senergy if he had not had an active and decisivelieutenant.

A new lodger and helper at 142 Strand in 1852

Chapman took on a new office helper for theWestminster Review in the autumn of 1852. This wasa young man of twenty called William Hale White.He was in flight from a proposed career as aCongregationalist minister. Born in Bedford in 1831,the son of a radical nonconformist bookseller, HaleWhite was brought up as a member of the town’sBunyan Meeting. The sect practised publicexpressions of conversion in front of the wholecongregation, and Hale White had to go through theboyhood misery of fearing himself damned andenduring with strong feelings of guilt a sham‘conversion’ in the meeting house, then being sent toa theological college in Hertfordshire, and finally, in1851, beginning a course of training as anIndependent minister at New College in St John’sWood.3

Here Hale White, though fearful and ultra-sensitive,rejected the theological bullying of his teachers.With two other students he rebelled against thePrincipal’s strict, punitive interpretation of scripture.They were expelled. At first, by his own account,Hale White was ‘adrift, knowing no craft, belongingto no religious body, and without social or politicalinterest’. In September 1852 he got a teaching postat a school in Stoke Newington, but stayed only onenight, during which he suffered a fit of terror andloneliness which made him give up the job before hehad begun it.4 It was at this point, in October 1852,that Hale White was taken on by Chapman andbecame Marian Evans’s fellow lodger at 142 Strand.He wrote about this episode in his life in an essay for

the Bookman in 1902, ‘George Eliot as I Knew Her’,and in autobiographical notes written for his childrennear the end of his life. He had occupied the roomabove hers in number 142, and remembered hers as‘a dark room at the end of a long dark passage’.5 Thelowly work for Chapman was uncongenial to him,but he worshipped Marian Evans, never forgetting herkindness towards ‘a mere youth, a stranger, awkwardand shy’. He was later determined to correct thedepiction of her after her death as a remote sibyl; inan article in the Athenaeum in 1885, he remembersher in her 142 Strand days as ‘one of the mostsceptical, unusual creatures I ever knew’. Hedescribes her sitting in her dark room, ‘with her hairover her shoulders, the easy chair half sideways to thefire, her feet over the arms, and a proof in her hands’.6

By the end of 1853 Marian Evans, though stillrunning the Westminster Review with Chapman, hadmoved out of 142 Strand into lodgings of her own,and was soon to brave society’s disapproval by livingwith the indissolubly married Lewes as his wife. HaleWhite left soon after to take up a clerkship in theRegistrar-General’s office just along the Strand inSomerset House. Despite the proximity of his newplace of work, it was the last he saw of Chapman andalso, to his ‘lasting sorrow’, of Chapman’s adoredfemale assistant.7

She, of course, was about to take the first greatdecision of her life, to live with Lewes as his wife, achoice without which – who knows? – she might nothave made the other great decision of her life, towrite novels under the name George Eliot. It was toJohn Chapman and 142 Strand that she owed herstart, as did other progressive young writers,including Lewes, Huxley (later Darwin’s ‘bulldog’),the American historian of the Netherlands JohnLothrop Motley, and the social philosopher andcoiner of the term ‘survival of the fittest’, HerbertSpencer. 142 Strand in the early 1850s was the hubof intellectual radicalism, free thinking, andunorthodox lives, the place where many eminentVictorians began their subsequently glittering careers.

References

1 For the story of the discovery of the diary for 1851, seeHaight, George Eliot and John Chapman (London,1940, reprinted 1969), pp. ix-x.

2 Ibid, pp. 254, 116.

3 See The Early Life of Mark Rutherford (W. Hale White).By Himself (Lodnon, 1913) , pp. 37-8, 46-7, 56-63.

4 Ibid, pp. 79-81.

5 ‘George Eliot as I Knew Her’, Bookman, August 1902,p. 159.

6 ‘George Eliot as I Knew Her’, p. 159.

7 Early Life, pp. 83, 88.

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Volume 103 • 2009 23


And, it has been the great age of industry that hasdefined us in more ways than we care to think. Whatwe do is what we are. Work, once considered acurse, lies at the heart of our being, our identity, ourself-esteem, friendships and financial security. Work,in the sense that we understand it today, is a productof the industrial revolution. So is capitalism, andsocialism, and communism; that all three are nowseen as profoundly suspect is perhaps the surest signyet that the age of industry – for us at least - is now athing of the past.

If in Britain the great age of industry has come andgone, it has left us a powerful legacy, not least in itsimpact – past and present – on society and thelandscape. Very shortly that inheritance, in terms ofhistory and archaeology, will be all that we have left;that and the complex web of inherited social attitudesand mores that have shaped so fundamentally thesociety in which we live. These, inevitably, willevaporate with time, taking with them first-handknowledge and experience of industry and all itrepresented. What remains will be the province ofhistorians and archaeologists.

But, of course, this decline is a geographically relativeterm. In other parts of the world – in India, or China,or Brazil – industrialisation in its contemporarymanifestation is being actively advanced as the pathfrom rural poverty to some new form of prosperity.

Already in Britain we can see the age of industry as adefining epoch in our history, not only in the contextof its origins and consequences but now, for the first

time, in terms of its demise. Industrialisation is atonce a distinctive and distinguishing historicalphenomenon in our own past, and the single mostinfluential social and economic force affecting globalsocieties today. Astonishing pace of changecharacterises this newly industrialising world, just asit did the Britain of two centuries ago. Only thedemise of industry has been faster. This has occurredover just two generations, arriving at a speedunimaginable thirty years ago. Within a furthergeneration there will be few who have any memoryof or experience in manufacturing industry as it cameto be defined in the early nineteenth century and as itcontinued until as recently as the late 1970s. Withinour historical understanding, possibly only theReformation has had such an immediate andcataclysmic effect on society and the landscape; that,and perhaps the Black Death.

The symbolically most significant metaphor ofchange is the virtual extinction of deep-pit coalmining in some fifteen years during the 1980s and‘90s. In 1913, when production peaked at 287million tons, there were 3,100 collieries in Britain,employing 1,118,000 miners. By the early 1980sthere were 130 pits; today there are just six, withtwenty-five opencast sites. Employment in miningnow numbers 5,600. In almost every other area oftraditional industrial activity similar change has takenplace. Textiles, for 150 years the cornerstone of thenation’s economy, have seen similar effects. In the1980s mills in the Greater Manchester area werebeing destroyed at the rate of two a week.

WHATEVER BECAME OF THE INDUSTRIALREVOLUTION?

Sir Neil Cossons OBEFormer Chairman of English Heritage

Peach Lecture, Delivered on Monday 9 March 2009 in the University of LeicesterIn association with the University of Leicester

The term ‘Industrial Revolution’ is familiar to us all, infused with expectations of meaning stemming from ourbackground and upbringing, education and, to a diminishing extent, our experience. It is a term richlycoloured by those who have commentated on it, the fount of political polemic and dogma, from which sprangboth a sensibility of the nobility of labour and consciousness of its degradation, a recognition of the triumphof capitalism as well as its brutishness.

The nature of work has altered too. In an age whereour prosperity derived from the output of mills,factories, foundries and workshops, the value andmeaning of work made some sort of sense. There wasa simple clarity about what went in at one door,gained value as a result of work, and came out at theother. Profits were made, workers were paid. Today,rather than go out to work people work out; men whoonce made steel now pump iron. Muscles are fordecoration. In the modern post-industrial world wehave to exercise our bodies because work no longerdoes that for us. But neither of course does it exhaustto the point of collapse, leave lungs destroyed bysilicosis, or the lives of men and women terminatedbefore what today would be seen as their prime.

So, if the age of industry is now gone, what do wewant of it its remains? Do its vestiges and itsmemories matter, and if so to whom? Is this a historywe wish to take forward with us, that futuregenerations might gain from it some understanding,meaning and inspiration? Or, can we let it go,relieved that the problem was too much to handleand the loss of its departing of no real consequence?Indeed, is this a chapter of history we might wish toconsign, consciously and enthusiastically, tooblivion?

When industrial archaeology was becoming popularin the 1960s there were two worlds, the industrialand the developing. Today, there are three, theindustrial, the developing and the post-industrial.Britain saw herself then as a thriving industrial nationand much of the burgeoning interest in the industrialpast stemmed from the forces of change that werepart of its revival, evidence that dated back to whatwere seen as the origins of Britain as the firstindustrial nation. Post-war urban and industrialrenewal was at once a threat to the old and a sourceof pride in a new world – of Jodrell Bank, motorways,the Post Office Tower, and Concorde. The idea thatwe should preserve something that reflected the yearsof industry had about it a logic that required noexplanation. It struck a chord with the public who,perhaps for the first time, could see their own history,places that reflected their lives and their values, beingtaken into captivity for the future. Some 200industrial sites and monuments were preserved, inthe main between the late 1960s and the early ‘80s.Within the space of a few months three open airindustrial museums – Ironbridge, the Black Country

and Beamish – were founded, and industrial sites andbuildings began to be Listed or Scheduled.

All this raises questions about how we handle thepast. For most of us, it is not a foreign country. It is afamiliar place, packaged, presented and predictable.We know what a hill fort, a castle, an abbey is andwhat it looks like. There are plenty of them and, forthe uninitiated, they can all appear much the same.This history that we have around us reflects whatprevious generations regarded as significant, theantiquarian views and values of the nineteenthcentury. It was by definition pre-industrial, for muchof the impetus that lay behind its preservation was tosave, in the face of inexorable urban and industrialencroachment, what were seen to be the remnants ofa mythic, Arcadian and essentially rural England.

Now, it is the detritus of the industrial age itself thatis disappearing. Most has already gone. If we wish togain some picture, some palpable feeling, of theworld’s largest centre of cotton manufacture, of theindustry that dominated Lancashire and clothed theworld, there is now just one – and only one – placewhere that can be seen, sensed, and understood.Queen Street Mill, Harle Syke, Burnley, is the lastsurviving Lancashire weaving shed – of manyhundreds - driven by a steam mill engine, wherethree hundred looms, their lineshafts turning, theirbelts on the fast and loose wheels clackity-clacking,can give some insight into a world now as distant asancient Greece or Rome.

So, let us look about us and begin to realise that weneed to re-calibrate our view of the past to embracethe industrial years. Some of these outstandingindustrial places have of course been accordedWorld Heritage status; the Ironbridge Gorge inShropshire, the Derwent Valley – with its eighteenthcentury textile mills - in Derbyshire, in RobertOwen’s model industrial settlement at New Lanark,in Saltaire. These are the set pieces of the world’s firstindustrial revolution.

But of the rest, when it comes to plotting a future, weknow little and care less. If the great icons of industryare largely recognised and have at least some degreeof protection, workers’ housing on the other hand -by far the most prolific surviving evidence of theindustrial age - is acutely vulnerable, invisible by itsvery ordinariness. The worst has of course already

24 Volume 103 • 2009


Volume 103 • 2009 25


gone, and properly so. Liverpool’s notorious courthousing was systematically demolished in theimmediate post-war years and as for back-to-backs,the best chance of finding some are in Birminghamwhere in Inge Street and Hurst Street a few have beenpreserved by the National Trust.

The terrace house, however, that most distinctivelyEnglish of urban housing forms, still abounds by thethousand, little understood and largely overlooked. Itwas terraces that housed the new population ofLeicester as it grew from 68,000 in 1861 to 212,000in 1901. Perhaps surprisingly, they exhibit anextraordinary range and diversity, of plan, materialsand styles. Although intensely vulnerable to ill-considered change, most are not only redeemablebut, increasingly, they are sought after. Young peopleon their way to better things seek to graduate from a1960s flat to a nineteenth century terrace. Thesehouses will be with us for many decades, not leastbecause as a nation we cannot, and should not, getrid of them. But how we handle their future willdetermine whether these great tracts of nineteenthcentury workers’ housing become down-at-heelslums or can serve a new and fruitful life as some ofthe most liveable of urban housing. They need to bestudied and understood. Here is rich territory forarchaeologists, historians, urban regenerationarchitects and planners. Informed conservation willbe the key to success. In a century’s time theworkplaces of the industrial revolution years willhave all but gone, but if we are thoughtful the homesof those whose work wrought that most fundamentalof changes to the nation’s economy, its society and itslandscape will be cherished as a vivid and permanentreflection of the age of industry.

26 Volume 103 • 2009


Wallace, a Welshman born in 1823 was a selfeducated man and joined his elder brother inbusiness as a surveyor. In 1844 he was appointed tothe Collegiate School in Leicester to teachdraughtsmanship, surveying and arithmetic. At theSubscription Library in Leicester, he met HenryWalter Bates, a hosiery apprentice with a passion forinsects, especially beetles. Bates taught Wallace to bea field naturalist and the two went on local collectingforays together and together wondered at theenormous variety to be found in nature. Theypondered Malthus’s “Principles of Population”, whichstressed the point that in nature reproduction alwaysoutstripped the resources on which survivaldepended.

When his brother died, Wallace returned home tosort out the family affairs. But he kept in touch withBates and the two of them decided to travel to theAmazon to explore the rain forest, known to bebiologically rich and diverse. They would financetheir expedition by collecting and selling naturalhistory specimens, which had a fashionable curiosityvalue as well as a scientific one at that time. Initiallythe two men worked together but later went theirown ways and in 1853 Wallace decided to returnhome. A fire in the ship destroyed almost all hiscollections and drawings but he finally managed toget a safe passage back to England. Here Wallaceimmediately started to plan for a second expeditionto the Far East, with the primary objective ofcollecting specimens of the spectacular Birds of

Paradise. These had been known as skins from thearea since the 16th century and were much soughtafter. Wallace was especially determined to bring alive bird back with him.

By September 1856, Wallace was in the Celebestravelling through New Guinea and making the SpiceIslands his headquarters. In Aru he managed topurchase skins of the Birds of Paradise and first sawtheir remarkable courtship displays sending detailedaccounts of his discoveries back home. In Temate, hewas struck down with malaria and was perhapsconsidering his own mortality when the idea of theselective survival of the fittest suddenly came to himas the answer to Malthus’s problem. His ideas weresketched out in a single evening and sent to Darwin,whom Wallace know as an eminent naturalistactively working on evolutionary theories. He wasasking for Darwin’s advice on the publication of hisideas “if there is anything in them”.

Darwin was shattered. Twenty years earlier he hadwritten a virtually identical outline of such ideashimself but had never published it, perhaps aware ofthe religious controversy it would cause and , as astock breeder, undoubtedly aware of the problemsregarding the mechanism of inheritance, as yetunresolved. However, Darwin’s friends, Lyell, Hookerand Huxley proposed that Darwin’s abstract andWallace’s paper should be read jointly at theLinnaean Society, with the two men taking equalcredit for the new theory.

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE AND THEBIRDS OF PARADISE

Sir David Attenborough OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRSLecture delivered on 23 March 2009

Joint Lecture with the Natural History SectionSummary by Jan Dawson

It was at a meeting of the Linnaean Society, 150 years ago, that members heard the first announcement of themost important and influential theory in biology – that natural selection, acting on the wide variation to befound within species could result in the evolution of new ones. Two papers were read, one by Charles Darwin,the other by Alfred Wallace. Neither author was present; Wallace was abroad and Darwin had lost his son theprevious week. Remarkably the Linnaean Society appears to have failed to appreciate the momentous natureof the occasion.

Volume 103 • 2009 27


At the time, Wallace was still in the Spice Islands,returning in 1862 to hear about the meeting and to belauded by the scientific fraternity. But he soonreturned to New Guinea, finding an unknown Bird ofParadise – Wallace’s Standard Wing, which wasnamed Semioptera wallacei after him. He was awayfor eight years and, travelling throughout the region,noticed how the fauna of SE Asia and Australasiadiffered materially either side of what is now termedWallace’s Line. This difference foreshadowed theTheory of Continental Drift which was not to berecognised until the 1960s with the discovery of platetectonics. On his way home, Wallace bought two liveLesser Birds of Paradise in Singapore and managed toget them safely back to London Zoo.

This time he arrived just after the publication ofDarwin’s “The Origin of species” and in the middle ofthe religious furore that it caused. The two men couldwell have been jealous rivals for the authorship of theidea whose fundamental nature was finally beingrecognised but Wallace wrote to Bates that he alwayscredited Darwin with his earlier grasp of the idea ofevolution by natural selection and all his years ofdetailed experimental work that supported it. In fact,both men behaved to each other throughout with themost heart-warming courtesy and generosity.

Wallace continued to publish and in 1869 broughtout his “The Malay Archipelago”, the work for whichhe is best remembered. In it he describes thedistinctive faunas of SE Asia and Australasia and also18 of the 42 species of Birds of Paradise now knownto exist. He was presented with the Founder’s GoldMedal by the Royal Geographic Society and theLinnaean Society’s Royal Medal which the RoyalSociety made him a Fellow in 1892, the ultimateaccolade for a scientist. Wallace died in 1913 and isburied at Broadstone in Dorset.

The talk was illustrated throughout, includingspectacular video footage taken for Sir David’s TVbroadcasts of displaying Birds of Paradise – the samespecies whose behaviour had so enthralled Wallace.A lively session of questions and answers followedand, after a vote of thanks by the Chairman of theNatural History Section, Sir David was given astanding ovation.

28 Volume 103 • 2009


Volcanism between 13-8 Ma in the Central SnakeRiver Plain involved magmas of high temperature(greater than or equal to 900 degrees C) and lowwater contents (less than 3 wt %)erupting to producelavas and ignimbrites with anhydrous phenocrystassemblages. The products of explosive eruptions, theignimbrites, are thought to be of large volume andare well exposed in steep-sided canyons on themargins of the Plain. However there is a similar fieldappearance in terms of welding intensity, lithic cargoand phenocryst assemblage which makes correlationbetween adjacent massifs difficult.

Bonnichsen et al (2008) used whole rock chemistry,magnetic polarity and stratigraphic position to groupunits into CAT (composition and time) groups. Thework has built upon this foundation by characterisingunits within a single CAT group to see if they areproducts of a single eruption. This is possible becauseignimbrites in the Central Snake River Plain maycontain numerous compositional populations ofpigeonite and augite which are so distinctive thatthey act as fingerprints of that unit. Crucially theseignimbrites show little compositional zoning in termsof clinopyroxene compositions throughout a deposit,i.e. proportions of the compositional modes mayvary, but the compositions of the modes remainconstant. This is important when attempting tocorrelate units based on geochemical characters.

In addition, correlations were tested using highprecision Ar/Ar geochronology and oxygen isotopiccomposition of units. Rhyolites in the Central SnakeRiver Plain show a characteristic depletion in epsilon

18 O with values ranging from -1.4% to +3.8 %compared with typical values in rhyolites of 7-10 %?(Boroughs et al 2005). All the units within acorrelation agreed in terms of age and epsilon 18 Owithin error; moreover the two correlations wereseparate in terms of age and oxygen isotopiccomposition.

Results

The most important result of the study was that,despite the numerous difficulties associated withworking in the Central Snake River Plain (e.g. remoteterrain, large distances between outcrops, poorlyexposed fall out stratigraphy, similarity of appearancebetween units), correlations can be made by thecombination of detailed fieldwork and geochemicalmethods.

The agreement between the units tested in terms ofwhole rock chemistry, magnetic polarity, phenocrystchemistry, oxygen isotopes and age suggest thatcorrelations may be made. The resulting ignimbrites,1200 cu km Big Bluff Tuff and the 640 cu km SterrBasin Tuff are of comparable magnitude to theyounger and better studied eruptions from theYellowstone hotspot.

References

Bonnichsen B, Leeman WP, Honjo N, McIntosh WC, andGodchaux MM (2008) Myocene Silicic Volcanism in SouthWestern Idaho: geochronology, geochemistry andevolution of the Central Snake River Plain. Bull Volcanol70:3, 315-342.

SUPER – ERUPTIONS OF AN UNUSUAL STYLEFROM THE YELLOWSTONE HOTSPOT TRACK

BENNETT FUND FOR RESEARCH: REPORT OF BENEFICIARY.

Project Leader: Ben Ellis, Department of Geology, University of Leicester.

The North Western USA has been the site of voluminous volcanism since the Miocene, starting around 16 Ma(mega annum) with the eruption of the Columbia River basalts and rhyolitic volcanism in Northern Nevadaand Southern Oregon (Pierce and Morgan 1992). After an initial period wherein silicic volcanism was widelydispersed, volcanism had generally moved north easterly along the Snake River Plain to the present dayYellowstone volcanic field, a trend inferred to represent the movement of the North American Plate over astationary hotspot.

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Boroughs S, Wolff J, Bonnichsen B, Godchaux M, Larson P(2005) Large-volume, low – epsilon 18 O rhyolites of theCentral Snake River Plain, Idaho, USA. Geology 33 10:821-824

Pierce KL, Morgan LA (1992) The Track of the YellowstoneHotspot: volcanism, faulting and uplift. In: Link PK, Kuntz

MA, Platt LB (eds) Regional Geology of Eastern Idaho andWestern Wyoming. Geol Soc Am Mem 179: 1-53

It is my pleasure as President of the Leicester Literaryand Philosophical Society to thank all those whohave made 2008-9 a successful one. Thanks are duethe secretary, treasurer and the membership andprogrammes secretaries. We are also grateful to theeditor of the Transactions and the manager of theWebsite. And, of course, the Council has workedhard. In addition to the officers of the Society, Ishould like to thank our generous sponsors and thecapable museum staff.

It is not easy being a member of the Lit and Phil. Bythis I mean that we have to take on a wide variety ofsubjects. Last Autumn two successive lectures dealtwith the Ard and Crafts Movement ( very much alocal affair) and then, a fortnight later, the future ofthe Universe! In the arts there were lectures on PhilipLarkin, Lewis Carroll and the literary coterie thatgathered at 142 The Strand. One of the features ofcontemorary society was addressed in the lecture onthe role in the community of local newspapers.

Several of these topics are dealt with elsewhere inLeicester, so it is important to ask what exactly the Litand Phil can bring to them. The answer is, I believe,what it always has been: the Lit and Phil brings to thediscussion of important matters a learned enthusiasm.Think of our last two lectures. Two knights – Sir NeilCossons and Sir David Attenborough – demonstratedthrough their tone as well as their learning theircommitments to, respectively, Industrial History andNatural History. Earlier in the year we heard aboutthe ingenuity that has brought advanced technologyto the study of Dinosaur remains. Speakingpersonally, I thought the Lit and Phil was at its best in

our responses to the lecture entitled: Can Chemistrybe Green?

This coming season we will be celebrating out 175th

Anniversary. I can say with assurance that in thebreadth of topic, and enthusiasm of delivery we willbe both nineteenth and distinctly twenty-first century

Richard Gill

The Annual General Meeting was followed by arecital by the pianist John Humphreys fromBirmingham Conservatoire

THE PRESIDENT’S ANNUAL REPORT 2008/09Presented at the Annual General Meeting on April 27


30 Volume 103 • 2009

October 6 2008

THE NOT ALTOGETHER ELEMENTARY CASE OFSHERLOCK HOLMESPresident's AddressOpen meeting to be followed by a socialgatheringThe Lord Mayor will be present.

October 20 2008

WIFE OR MUSE: PHILIP LARKIN’S LOVETRIANGLEProfessor James BoothHead of the Department of English, University ofHullSponsored by University of Leicester Bookshop

November 3 2008

LEWIS CARROLL AND THE VICTORIAN STAGE,THEATRICALS IN A QUIET LIFE

Professor Richard FoulkesHead of the English Department & Professor ofTheatre History, University of Leicester

November 17 2008

Partnership Lecture with New Walk Musuem ERNEST GIMSON, ARCHETYPAL ARTS ANDCRAFTS DESIGNERMrs Mary GreenstedCurator of the Exhibition “Craft and Design:Ernest Gimson and the Arts and Crafts Movement”New Walk Museum November 2008 - March2009

1 December 2008

THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSEProfessor AJ MeadowsEmeritus Professor Department of InformationScienceUniversity of Loughborough Sponsored by the British Association for theAdvancement of Science

January 12 2009

CAN CHEMISTRY BE GREEN ?Professor Martyn PoliakoffSchool of ChemistryUniversity of NottinghamSponsored by The Royal Society of Chemistry

January 26 2009

GRAVE SECRETS OF DINOSAURSDr Philip ManningUniversity of ManchesterJoint Lecture with the Geology Section

February 9 2009

THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN PROMOTINGCOMMUNITY COHESIONMr Nick CarterFormer Editor, Leicester MercurySponsored by the Leicester Mercury

February 23 2009

LIFE AT 142 STRAND IN THE 1850SProfessor RD AshtonQuain Professor of English Language andLiteratureUniversity College LondonSponsored by De Montfort University

March 9 2009

PEACH LECTURE (held in association with theUniversity of Leicester)WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE INDUSTRIALREVOLUTION?Sir Neil Cossons, OBEFormer Chairman of English HeritagePlease note this lecture will be held at 5.30 pm inLecture Theatre 1, Ken Edwards Building,University of Leicester. To be followed by a reception in the CharlesWilson Building

March 23 2009

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE AND THE BIRDS OFPARADISESir David Attenborough OM CH FRSNaturalist, Writer and Broadcaster(Joint lecture with the Natural History SectionAdmission by ticket. Further Details to follow

April 27 2009 (7.00 pm start)

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

PIANO RECITAL John Humphreys

(Wine will be served in the interval)

Programme for the 2008-2009 Season

Volume 103 • 2009 31


OFFICERS 2008/2009

Honorary Life President: Dr Bob King

Honorary Life Vice-President: Dr Trevor Ford O.B.E

Chairman: Dr Joanne Norris

Vice-Chairman: Mark Evans

Secretary: Fiona Barnaby

Treasurer: Eileen Johnson

Field Secretary: Helen Jones

Publicity Officer: Kay Hawkins

‘Charnia’ Editor: Andrew Swift

Webmaster: Dennis McVey

Student Representative: Rhian Llewellyn

Committee Members

Margaret East

David Baines

Co-opted Committee Members

Prof Richard Aldridge

Dr Roy Clements

Dennis Gamble

Chairman’s Report, given at the AGM onMarch 25th 2009Dr Joanne Norris, Geology Section Chairman 2008-9

This year has maintained the high standards that youhave come to expect from the Geology Section, andit has been another exceedingly busy one. We notonly had our usual indoor meetings and fieldexcursions but we also exhibited at the Geologists’Association (GA) Festival of Geology on November1st, which was held at University College, London.This is an annual event for the GA but it was the firsttime the Section had attended. We were invited toapply for a small grant from the GA’s Curry Fund toenable us to attend and to also update our publicitymaterial. We produced our new roller banner, postersand membership leaflets, for which we thank theCurry Fund and our designers Andrew Swift andDavid Baines. We also sold a few copies of our

Building Stones of Leicester books and previousyear’s Seminar booklets. Members of the public fromthe East Midlands are also interested in the Section.

The summer field programme, organised by our FieldSecretary Helen Jones, ran smoothly. Unfortunately Iwas unable to attend two thirds of it owing to mysummer secondment to Ipswich. However, we had afascinating day out at Chatsworth House on May 17th,viewing the hidden wonders of the Duchess ofDevonshire’s mineral collection which was followedby a superb mid-summer’s weekend in the Cotswoldsexploring the localities of Oathill Quarry, SnowshillQuarry, Leckhampton Hill, Hock Cliff, etc. We hadthe traditional Section dinner on the Saturdayevening at the White Lion in Winchcombe. Membershave also visited localities around Castleton in July,our favourite ‘fossiling’ grounds of Blockley Quarry inAugust and Ketton Quarry in September. Themembers revisited Lapworth Museum in Birminghamfor our annual museum trip which concluded thesummer programme.

We had an excellent season of lectures during thewinter programme. There was one last minute changein proceedings when Dr Carl Stevenson fromBirmingham University stepped in as a replacementon November 19th for which we were extremelygrateful.

Our Parent Body talk, given by Dr Phillip Manning onJanuary 26th on ‘Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs’, attracteda large audience, which filled the Main Gallery at theMuseum.

Our Christmas and Members Evenings were bothwell supported, and we thank Andrew Swift (10 yearsof weekend field trips), Trevor Ford (Castleton Caves),John Dickinson (Coal mining and Bardon quarryextension plans) and Bruce Smith (Mongolia: Asteppe into the unknown) for their presentations atthese two events; members also brought displays andcollections for us to peruse.

We were privileged to take part in the Geologists’Association 150th Anniversary celebrations as theykindly sponsored one of our lectures held onNovember 5th, when Professor Jim Rose talked of the

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE GEOLOGY SECTION

32 Volume 103 • 2009


landscape, environment and climate of the earliesthumans in northern Europe. At our March 11th lecturethe – Baldwin Lecture – Drs Williams and Edwardsexplained the process of replicating fossils.

The Saturday Seminar on ‘Charles Darwin and theGreat Pioneers of Geology’ was held on March 7th.Over 80 participants attended. It was big success withexcellent speakers and memorable presentations.Our thanks go to the sub-committee (Mark Evans,Joanne Norris, Kay Hawkins, Andrew Swift, DavidBaines and Richard Aldridge) and the receptioncommittee (Fiona Barnaby, Margaret East and DennisGamble) for their hard work in organising the event.

Attendance during the winter programme has beengenerally good. We had an average of 43 (membersand visitors), slightly down on last year (48). Thisslight drop in numbers might have been caused bythe campus car parking ban which was enforced bythe university. The Section had been given nowarning before the December 3rd meeting. In additionthe extremely icy and snowy weather in January andFebruary might have affected numbers. There was anincrease in visitor numbers this year who must beencouraged to become members.

The Section continues to maintain a healthymembership base, with new members coming in toreplace those who have not renewed membershipwhich included those who had have moved out of thearea. There are 2 Life members, 14 Student or ParentBody members, 51 Ordinary members and 21Joint/Family members. Our student representativeRhian Llewellyn boosted student membershipnumbers with a half price deal in early 2009.

Finally, I must thank Andrew Swift and Dennis McVeyfor cataloguing the Section’s activities in ournewsletter, Charnia, and our website respectively.Thanks go to Margaret East for providing us with thetea and coffee, and all the other Officers and theCommittee for efficiently maintaining the Section’sbusiness.

Summer Programme 2008

Saturday 17th May 2008. Chatsworth House and Mineral Collection. Leader: Mick Cooper, (Nottingham Museums).

Friday 20th – Sunday 22nd June 2008. Weekend field excursion to the Cotswolds. Leader: Andrew Swift, (Digitimage, Leicester).

Sunday 13th July 2008. Castleton, Speedwell, Cavedale and Dirtlow Rake. Leader: Professor Gerard Slavin, (Darley Dale,Derbys).

Saturday 9th August 2008. Blockley Quarry, Gloucestershire. Leader: Dr Mike Howe, (British Geological Survey,Keyworth).

Saturday 6th September 2008. Joint field meeting with the WarwickshireGeological Conservation Group to Ketton Quarry,Rutland. Leader: Professor John Hudson, (Leicester).

Saturday 11th October 2008. Lapworth Museum, University of Birmingham. Leaders: Professor Paul Smith and Mr JonClatworthy, (University of Birmingham).

Winter Programme 2008-9

All talks were held in Lecture Theatre 3, Ken EdwardsBuilding, University of Leicester at 7.30pm unlessotherwise stated.

Wednesday 8th October 2008Dr Stewart Fishwick (Dept. of Geology, Universityof Leicester): The African continent: seismologicalstudies of the upper mantle and the relationshipwith surface geology.

Wednesday 22nd October 2008 Dr Michael Howe (British Geological Survey,Keyworth): Preserving our geological heritage: thecuration of fossil and mineral collections.

Wednesday 5th November 2008

Geologists’ Association 150th Anniversarysponsored lecture.Professor Jim Rose (Department of Geography,Royal Holloway, University of London): Thelandscape, environment and climate of theearliest Humans in northern Europe.

Volume 103 • 2009 33


Wednesday 19th November 2008Dr Carl Stevenson (School of Geography, Earth andEnvironmental Sciences, University ofBirmingham): Lateral transport of granitic magmain the upper crust.

Wednesday 3rd December 2008Dr Giles Miller (Natural History Museum, London):The use of Synchrotron radiation to examinemicropalaeontological specimens.

Wednesday 17th December 2008Christmas Meeting, Dinosaur Gallery, New WalkMuseum, Leicester.

Wednesday 14th January 2009Professor Gerard Slavin (Retired Professor ofHistopathology, Barts): Geology and Disease.

Monday 26th January 2009Parent Body Lecture, New Walk Museum, Leicester.

Dr Phillip Manning (School of Earth, Atmospheric& Environmental Sciences & the ManchesterMuseum, University of Manchester): Grave secretsof dinosaurs.

Wednesday January 28th 2009Professor Stephen Hesselbo (Department of EarthSciences, University of Oxford): The geologicalrecord of massive volcanism and large meteoriteimpacts: a view from the British Isles.

Wednesday 11th February 2009Members Evening, Lord Mayor’s Room, New WalkMuseum, Leicester.

Wednesday 25th February 2009Dr John Bridges (Department of Physics andAstronomy, University of Leicester): The geologyand evolution of Mars.

Saturday 7th March 2009Annual Saturday Seminar, Lecture Theatre 1, KenEdwards Building, University of Leicester, 11.00am – 5.00 pm'Charles Darwin and the Great Pioneers ofGeology'.

Wednesday 11th March 2009The Palaeontological Association Baldwin Lecture.

Dr David Williams and Dr Dee Edwards (GeoEdLtd., Cornwall): Is it real? Fossil replication: fromtrilobites to whole outcrops.

Wednesday March 25th 2009

Annual General Meeting and Chairman’s Address

Dr Joanne Norris (Halcrow Group Ltd.,Peterborough): Rocky tales of a GeotechnicalEngineer.

34 Volume 103 • 2009


James Parkinson – an eventful life

Dr Cherry Lewis, Senate House, University ofBristol, Tyndall Ave, Bristol BS8 1TH

Of the 13 Founding Fathers of the Geological Society,four were medical men: William Babington, JamesLaird, James Franck and James Parkinson (1755-1824). Although Parkinson was most famous in hislifetime for being, as George Bellas Greenough put it,‘not merely the best but almost the only fossilist of hisday’ we remember him today for having given hisname to Parkinson’s disease.

At the age of 16, Parkinson was apprenticed to hisfather to learn the art and mystery of being anapothecary. During the 1790s, he became heavilyinvolved in radical politics, joining several societiesfounded to campaign for the reform of parliament.Under the pseudonym of ‘Old Hubert’, Parkinsonwrote many political pamphlets that ridiculed andharangued a corrupt and incompetent governmentfor the soaring cost of food and high taxes, incurredas a result of the war with France.

In the course of these activities, Parkinson becamecaught up in the ‘Pop Gun Plot’, as it became known,which allegedly planned to kill the king while he wasin the theatre. These false accusations resulted in awave of arrests of many of Parkinson’s friends accusedof high treason – for which they could be hung drawn

and quartered. On learning of the arrests, Parkinsonimmediately offered to testify before the PrivyCouncil on behalf of his friends, hoping to show themthe ludicrous nature of the charges. In the prevailingpolitical climate, he must have realised that he ran aserious risk of being implicated in the plot, and thathe could be putting his life in real danger.

Parkinson had an excellent knowledge of chemistryand recognised the importance of it to both themedical practitioner and the fossilist, writing a classictextbook on the subject. He also wrote many medicalworks aimed at the general public, helping themassess in times of sickness, whether or not to call inthe physician. With these same principles in mind of‘improving’ the general public, Parkinson publishedhis three-volume work on fossils: Organic Remains ofa Former World (1804, 1808 and 1811). Thismasterpiece was to put palaeontology on thescientific map of Britain for the first time.

Having become interested in fossils as a young man,Parkinson had tried to find publications in Englishthat would help him understand their significance,but little was available at the time. Assuming thatothers must be having similar difficulties, he decidedto write the definitive book himself. Organic Remainswas aimed at a popular readership and writtenaccordingly, nevertheless, the work reveals a manfully conversant with contemporary geological ideasbeing propounded on the Continent which were, in

CHARLES DARWIN AND THE GREAT PIONEERS OF GEOLOGY

Annual Saturday Seminar

Presented by theGeology Section of the

Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society

7th March 2009: 11.00 am – 5.00 pmLecture Theatre 1, Ken Edwards Building,

University of Leicester

Abstracts

Volume 103 • 2009 35


general, in advance of those in Britain. In 1807, hisexpertise as the country’s only ‘fossilist’ resulted inhim becoming one of the founders of the GeologicalSociety.

In 1817, he published the work for which he is bestremembered today and which resulted in the diseasehe identified bearing his name. His essay on theShaking Palsy, now called Parkinson’s disease, hasdeservedly become a medical classic, but it was forhis work on natural history that the Royal College ofSurgeons awarded him their first gold medal.However, his political radicalism barred him frombecoming a Fellow of the Royal Society, despite hisscientific achievements being far greater than manyothers who were elected FRS.

William Buckland (1784-1856): an earlygeological innovatorDr Christopher J. Duffin, 146 Church Hill Road,Sutton, Surrey SM3 8NF.

Devon-born William Buckland was schooled atTiverton and Westminster before attending CorpusChristi College, Oxford where he was eventuallyappointed Reader and ultimately Professor ofGeology, the first to hold such a position. A popularlecturer, liberally peppering his talks with anecdote,humour, visual imagery and the use of maps andspecimens, many of his students went on to becomecelebrated geologists in their own right. Establishinga rich network of personal contacts, both amateurand professional, Buckland exerted much influencein the development of early 19th century geologicalthought, and was active in the fledgling GeologicalSociety of London as well as other academicsocieties. His career as a churchman eventually drewhim away from active participation in science, but asDean of Westminster he oversaw revision of theAnglican liturgy amongst other significant religiousand social contributions. Forced retirement to Islip in1850 because of mental problems was followed bycommittal to a Clapham asylum where he eventuallydied.

His roughly 25 years of active contribution to geologywas marked by a complete fascination for the sciencein all its diversity. His researches were conducted inmeticulous detail, the results presented with great

clarity, and his theses argued persuasively. Almost acentury before the Actuopaläontologie of the Germanschool, Buckland was engaged in experimentation toenhance his understanding of his geologicalobservations. In testing his hypothesis that bonesfrom cave deposits at Kirkdale in Yorkshirerepresented the prey of hyaenas, Buckland comparedbreakage patterns and gnaw marks on the Pleistocenebones with those produced by an extant menagerie ofhyaena on the hindquarters of an ox. Struck by theresemblance of white phosphate-rich balls ofmaterial interspersed with the cave bones to formerlymedicinal apothecarial Album graecum, hesuggested that these specimens represented fossilisedfaeces. Extending his studies to the dark cylindricalphosphatic bodies found in the latest Triassic Rhaeticbone beds and the spiral (and other morphological)structures, sometimes containing vertebrateinclusions, associated with the ichthyosaur-bearingblack shales of the Lyme Regis Lower Lias, he coinedthe term ‘coprolite’ for these unlikely records ofvertebrate daily life. He filled an extant shark ileumwith Roman cement in order to ascertain whether theintestinal spiral valve could convey a helical structureon any material passing through it.

On receiving Triassic specimens which he believed tobe reptilian footprints, Buckland responded to anocturnal epiphany by waking his long suffering wifeand getting her to help him with the production ofvast quantities of pastry. Once the correct consistencyof dough was determined, various members of theBuckland family menagerie were then ‘encouraged’to walk across it and their tracks were compared tothe Triassic specimens. Jubilant at identifying a closematch with one of his three species of pet tortoise,Buckland then repeated the experiment in thepresence of the great and the good of geologicalsociety at a party held by Sir Roderick Murchison.

Furthermore, it was Buckland who was the firstEnglishman to adopt and apply Agassiz’s glacialtheory to British geomorphology. It was also he whodescribed the first named dinosaur, Megalosaurus,from the Oxfordshire Stonesfield Slate, brought thefirst British pterosaur to light from the early Jurassic,gave an up-to-date, state-of-the-art account ofgeological science for the Bridgewater Treatise series,amongst many other contributions. Extraordinarilyproductive, he was an innovative thinker at the

36 Volume 103 • 2009


Figures: (Top) Dentary of Megalosaurus (Oxford University Museum) from the Stonesfield slate of Oxfordshire; (Bottomleft) Bust of William Buckland held in Oxford University Museum; (Bottom right) grave of William Buckland at Islip ParishChurch, Islip, Oxfordshire.


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forefront of changing geological views in the 1820’sto 1840’s, and fondly ridiculed in doggerel andcartoons by close contemporaries and friends.

Henry De la Beche and the GeologicalSurveyTom Sharpe, Department of Geology, NationalMuseum of Wales, Cardiff CF10 [email protected]

Henry De la Beche (1796-1855) built theinfrastructure of professional geology in Britain withthe establishment of the Geological Survey of GreatBritain (now the British Geological Survey) in 1835,the Museum of Economic Geology (later, theMuseum of Practical Geology and then theGeological Museum, now part of the Natural HistoryMuseum), the Mining Record Office (now part of theCoal Authority) and the Royal School of Mines (nowpart of Imperial College London). Until then, controlof the young science had lain with the gentlemen ofthe Geological Society from its foundation in 1807.

De la Beche (probably pronounced ‘beach’) was bornin London and, after a peripatetic childhood andexpulsion from military college at Great Marlow,settled with his widowed (and twice-remarried)mother in Lyme Regis in 1812 at the age of 16. Therehe developed an interest in geology through hisacquaintance with the young fossil collector MaryAnning (1796-1847) and the encouragement of hisstep-father and his friends in Lyme. On inheriting thefamily’s slave-worked Jamaican sugar plantation in1817, he was in a position to pursue his hobby as agentlemanly pastime, join the Geological Society,build a fossil collection and travel.

Through the 1820s, he refined his geological skillsand established his reputation as a geologist throughhis publications on the geology of southwestEngland, France and Italy, and as one of the first todescribe the early Jurassic marine reptiles beingfound by Mary Anning. In 1823-24 he visited hisJamaican estate and upon his return published hisobservations on the state of slaves in Jamaica, tocontribute some facts to the then-current emotivedebate on slavery and its abolition. He also publishedthe first description of the geology of the island and istoday regarded as the father of Jamaican geology.

His approach to geology was strongly empirical,recognising that geology was too young a science forgrand theories based on few facts. In this he wasinfluenced by the methodology of the GeologicalSociety under George Bellas Greenough. Thisapproach put him at odds with more theoreticalgeologists such as Charles Lyell. De la Beche wasskilled with pen and brush and frequentlycommented on such controversies through cartoonsketches.

The 1830s was a time of wide-ranging social reformsin Britain where an aristocratic or gentlemanly élitewas being replaced in many spheres, includingeducation and science, by a new utilitarianprofessionalism. Geology was no exception and thatdecade saw the rise of the professional geologist. Theestablishment of the Geological Survey camehowever, less from De la Beche’s radical idealism andmore from the insecurity of his financial situation.

In the early 1830s, while geologically mapping inDevon, a slave revolt in Jamaica and a continuingdepression of the sugar market left his incomeuncertain and he found himself obliged to approachthe government for financial support for his work. Inthis, he showed for the first time his perspicacity andunderstanding of officialdom which latercharacterized his successful dealings with thegovernment. His persuasive cost-benefit analysis ofthe geological mapping of Devon led to hisappointment as Geologist to the TrigonometricalSurvey of Great Britain and a payment of £300. In1835, he was allowed to extend his mapping intoCornwall and from this the Geological Survey ofGreat Britain emerged.

By the mid 1840s, De la Beche had built aprofessional, government-funded scientific team oftwenty staff. He had expanded his geological empireto include a museum and a mining records office andhad plans for a mining school. Throughout these earlyyears, De la Beche stressed the national economicbenefits and utilitarian value of geology and of theGeological Survey. He proved himself adept atdealing with civil servants and politicians to providea firm and permanent foundation for government-supported science, although his colleagues thoughthim at times an “artful dodger” and a “greatintriguer”.

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By the late 1840s, De la Beche’s career was at itsheight and he was firmly at the helm of geology inBritain. Not only was he Director of the GeologicalSurvey of Great Britain and Ireland and of theMuseum of Economic Geology, but he was Presidentof the Geological Society in 1847-49, as well asPresident of Section C of the British Association forthe Advancement of Science in 1848, and Presidentof the newly-established Palaeontographical Society,a post he held from 1847 until his death.

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) – a Mercian‘glacial’ geologist

Professor Peter Worsley, The University of Reading,Whiteknights, Reading, Berkshire, RG6 6AH.

Charles Darwin was born at ‘The Mount’ inShrewsbury, Shropshire on 12th February 1809. Hisillustrious grandfather – Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)– was born in Elton Hall, Elton, Nottinghamshire andthe family line can be traced back to William Darwin(deceased before 1542) of Marton, Lincolnshire.Hence the family were of true Mercian stock.

Darwin’s opportunity of sailing in the Beagle was theresult of the suicide of Lieutenant Pringle Stokes in1828 at Puerto Hambre on the Straits of Magellanduring the first South American surveying voyage ofthe Beagle (1826-1830). Robert Fitz-Roy (1805-1865), who alas was to later also take his own life,replaced Stokes as commander and in an attempt tocontrol theft by the native Fuegians he took hostages.In order to return the hostages to their native homeafter two years of ‘Christian education’ in Britain,Fitz-Roy was eventually able to gain Admiraltyapproval for a second surveying voyage by the Beagle(1832-1836) and authorization to take a naturalist ofhis choosing.

After attending Shrewsbury School, Darwin spent 2years at Edinburgh University where he gained hisfirst formal geological education by attending anatural history course given by the Wernerian RobertJameson (1774-1854). Thereafter he attendedCambridge University to read for an ordinary BAdegree (not theology as is often incorrectly asserted)and during that time became acquainted with AdamSedgwick, the Professor of Geology. During thesummer prior to embarkation on the Beagle, Darwin

had some bedrock field mapping training withSedgwick in North Wales but they were oblivious tothe imprint of glaciation on the landscape. Fitz-Royhad ensured that a copy of the first volume of CharlesLyell’s Principles of Geology was in the Beagle libraryand this plus the 2 volumes published during thevoyage greatly influenced Darwin’s approach to fieldgeology.

Darwin became aware of anomalous clasts (erratics)before he left school, e.g. the Bellstone inShrewsbury. In Tierra del Fuego, along the northernshore of the Beagle Channel he observed ‘immenseglaciers’ and a number of these were subject toterminal calving where they entered the sea creatingice bergs. He appreciated the difference in landformand sedimentological response between fluvial andglacial processes. However, it was only afterreturning to Britain that he had the chance to read thethen contemporary literature on the developing‘Glacial Theory’. He was clearly impressed by thepaper by Jens Esmark (1763-1838) when he came towrite his ‘Journal and remarks’ for the narrative of thesecond surveying voyage.

In 1838 he undertook a new field study of the GlenRoy shorelines and argued for a marine origin. In thishe was undoubtedly influenced by the Neotectonicmarine terraces he had examined at Coquimbo incentral Chile. Later he considered his Glen Royinterpretation as ‘his greatest blunder’. In the Pacifiche encountered coral atolls and his subsidencehypothesis has withstood the test of time. The heateddebate over the postulated glaciation of Britain in1840 at the Geological Society led him to undertakewhat was to be his last geological fieldwork in NorthWales in 1842. Undoubtedly, with his experience ofthe glaciated landscapes of Tierra del Fuego, enabledhim to immediately see the magnificent glaciallandforms and allied erratic block transport. As aresult he became one of the first British geologists toembrace the land ice hypothesis although his supportof the then conventional wisdom of the ‘GreatSubmergence’ accounting for ice berg transport oferratic blocks outside mountainous terrain wasretained until the 1860’s.

Although Darwin concentrated on evolutionarybiology after c. 1850, he retained an interest ingeology. During a visit to his eldest son inSouthampton in 1876 he noted disturbances in

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superficial terrace gravels and ‘the larger stonesstanding on end’ associated with a general verticalclast fabric. He entered into correspondence withJames Geikie about their significance as cold climatephenomena.

The Beagle Collection as a collection ofgeological objects: acquisition, usageand continuing history

Dr Lyall I. Anderson, University of Cambridge, TrinityLane, Cambridge CB2 1TN.

Charles Darwin [1809-1882] was an avid collectorfrom an early age. A childhood spent in thegeologically varied county of Shropshire, two years inEdinburgh and environs and accompanying AdamSedgwick on fieldwork in North Wales all added tohis growing geological experience. The stronginfluence of Charles Darwin’s teachers and mentors atthe University of Cambridge can be detected in thelanguage and style of his geological field notebooks.But as we examine the notebooks in detail, we gain asense of how many other earlier influences shapedthe ideas and thinking of the developing fieldgeologist.

The first volume of Charles Lyell’s ‘Principles ofGeology’ provided Darwin with a framework intowhich he found he could fit his ongoing fieldobservations. That said, the other two volumes of the‘Principles’ only arrived with Darwin piecemeal aftertheir publication dates in Britain (1832 and 1833) andafter their outward sea voyages to join HMS Beagle.Darwin spent two extended field seasons in the orefields of Chile (1834 and 1835) and his notebooksfrom this time reveal careful observation and earlytheorizing as to the importance of cross-cutting andmultiple event brecciation in the formation of ore-bearing vein systems. These observations were a mixof his personal experience and his conversation withminers and mine owners in the mineral exploitativeindustries of Chile. His observations stand up well towhat we might know and recognise as stockwork orebodies associated with Porphyry Copper Deposits.Darwin’s thoughts on geologically ‘young’ golddeposits brought him into direct disagreement withRoderick Murchison at the Geological Society ofLondon in 1849.

On his return to England he set about finding subjectspecialists capable of researching the collections thathe had assembled whilst voyaging for almost fiveyears onboard HMS Beagle. Although much of hisfossil material was ‘farmed’ out to others for formaldescription (including the then Hunterian ProfessorRichard Owen), he retained the majority of his rockand mineralogical collections long after publishinghis few formal geological works (such as GeologicalObservations on South America (1844)). Collectionsassembled during a person’s lifetime often take on anidentity of their own after the death of their collector,and so it was with Darwin’s geological objects. Thegeological samples now held by The SedgwickMuseum of Earth Sciences only arrived back inCambridge in January 1897 some 60 years after itsinitial assembly, fifteen years after Darwin’s death andshortly after the death of his widow Emma. Here itformed a significant addition to the SedgwickMemorial Museum opened in 1904. A preliminarycatalogue of the collection was prepared in 1907 bythe renowned petrologist Alfred Harker [1859-1939],who began the task of thin sectioning and providingmore accurate identification of Darwin’s rocks.Subsequently, the petrologist Cecil E. Tilley [1894-1973] used the hand specimens and derivative thinsections in his studies of the St Paul’s Rocks dunitesand mylonites. Labelling and handwriting styles onthe thin sections help chart various workers researchinterests (published and unpublished) in the BeagleCollection rocks up to the present day.

Maps, mountains and madness – CharlesLapworth and the Highlands Controversy

Professor Paul Smith, Lapworth Museum of Geology,University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT.

From the visit of Murchison and Sedgwick to the NWHighlands in 1827 through to the 1880s and the startof the Geological Survey’s mapping campaign,epistemological development was greatly hamperedby the lack of accurate maps and the remoteness ofthe terrain. In consequence, debate centred onindividual localities, or even individual lithologies,rather than a 2D or 3D spatial awareness. One of themost significant breakthroughs in the HighlandsControversy came in 1882, after a quarter of acentury of stalemate, when Charles Lapworth beganto translate the techniques he had successfully

40 Volume 103 • 2009


developed in the Southern Uplands of Scotland to theNW Highlands. Lapworth’s route of entry to geologywas essentially self-taught while working as a localschoolmaster and, later, an English teacher. Thismeant that he had the fortune of not carrying legacyknowledge (‘baggage’) and was more open to theinfluences of European geologists, particularly ArnoldEscher von der Linth, Albert Heim, Marcel Bertrandand Eduard Suess in the area of structural geology,and Gustaf Linnarsson in the uses of biozones forstratigraphic correlation. Furthermore, his solutionsto the long-standing Cambrian–Silurian controversyand to the stratigraphy and structure of the SouthernUplands of Scotland directly opposed the Survey, andhis reputation as an iconoclast and free-thinker wasdeveloping.

Lapworth was appointed to the newly created chairof geology at the University of Birmingham in 1881,and selected the NW Highlands as his first majorresearch project, clearly cognisant of the surroundingcontroversy. He applied for funding from the RoyalSociety and left for the Highlands immediately uponhearing of the success of the application on 3rd August1882. Lapworth’s 1882 work started at Durness,where the only faunal age control was present, but hequickly moved to Loch Eriboll, where he was able toestablish a reference stratigraphy on the eastern side.

A letter to Bonney dated 9th September 1882,preserved in the archives at the Lapworth Museum,makes it clear that the major elements of theHighlands Controversy had been solved within thatmonth of fieldwork. The breakthrough also involvedthe recognition for the first time of mylonites. It isalso clear from the letter, that to make thisbreakthrough Lapworth had worked day and night –a self-induced pressure that was to have majorimplications in the 1883 field season.

Lapworth’s field sketches, and those for ensuingpublications, show that he was clearly thinking interms of recumbent and gently inclined folds as ameans of generating the observed repetitions,following the seminal ideas of Heim. However, hisfield sketches, and the recognition of mylonites, alsomake it clear that, unlike Heim, he was recognisingthe presence of large-scale reverse faults. Lapworth’sideas were developing at roughly the same time,though slightly predate, the suggestions of MarcelBertrand that a low angle thrust explained therelationships seen at Glarus better than Heim’s ideasof a large-scale fold pair. This cross-fertilisation ofideas between contemporary research in the NWHighlands and Alps is evidenced by newlydiscovered photographs of Lapworth and Heimcarrying out joint fieldwork in the Alps.

Figure: The Moine thrust and Glencoul thrust on the northern side of Loch Glencoul, NW Highlands. The Moine thrust has adisplacement of around 100 km, and the development of an understanding of large-scale sub-horizontal displacements inmountain belts was a key to solving the Highlands Controversy in the late 19th century.

Volume 103 • 2009 41


By the end of 1882, Lapworth had solved theHighlands Controversy to his own satisfaction but itremained to convince the remainder of the geologicalcommunity. He started by producing his paper on the‘The Secret of the Highlands’, presenting it to theGeologists’ Association in the spring and autumn of1883, but also began to persuade key individuals bydemonstrating the structure in the northwest. Hecommenced in 1883 with Teall and Blake, when heguided them around the significant localities,convincing them of the veracity of his interpretation.Peach and Horne were in the area at the same time,having been despatched by Geikie, though thepolitics of their meeting means that the degree ofcollaboration is intractably sealed in secrecy. Havingconvinced these four, the pressure of the situationand the intensive working style he had developedfinally had its affect on Lapworth and he suffered awell-documented breakdown. Peach and Horne wenton to carry out one of the major achievements in thehistory of geology, but the foundations wereLapworth’s. It is often said that he never returned tothe NW Highlands for fear of his nervous conditionreturning. However, recent discovered archivalmaterial show that the circle was closed – aphotograph of Peach and Lapworth taken shortly afterthe publication of the memoir shows Peach sittingwith Lapworth on a tour of the newly mapped groundshortly before Lapworth’s retirement.

42 Volume 103 • 2009


In the Western Alps, the European Plate is seen tohave been subducted beneath the Adriatic micro-plate. The generally SE directed subduction of theEuropean continental lithosphere can be followedalong strike and into the most complete transectacross the Alps located at the transition betweenWestern and Eastern Alps in Eastern Switzerland.Further eastwards, the subduction angle graduallybecomes steeper and is finally vertical under thewesternmost part of the Eastern Alps (western TauernWindow and Giudicarie lineament). Quiteunexpectedly, some 50 km further to the east it is thecontinental lower lithosphere of the Adriatic plate thatis seen to have been subducted to the NE beneath theEuropean Plate although there is no fundamentalchange in the crustal architecture; the slabconfiguration is that of the Dinarides. It is argued thatthe easternmost Alps became part of the Dinaridicorogen during the last 20 Ma in the wake of adramatic reorganization of the entire Alps-Carpathians-Dinarides system.

Major along-strike changes are also reflected infundamental changes in the geometry and timing ofnappe stacking. The West-Alpine nappe stack wasseverely overprinted by late stage (post-35 Ma) west-directed indentation of the Adriatic micro-plate in afirst stage, followed by even later incorporation of theLigurian Alps and their continuation into the growingApenninic orogen during a second stage. The profilein Eastern Switzerland is characterized by animpressive amount of Cenozoic N-S-shortening thatamounts to some 500km according to kinematic retrodeformations. Thrusting is asymmetric and top-Ninitially, but completely reworked into a bivergent

orogen during Oligocene back thrusting and retrothrusting that pre-dominates during the Miocene. Avery thick pile of Austroalpine nappes characterizesthe easternmost Alps, floating on European crust. Thisnappe stack formed during 2 subsequent orogenies, aCretaceous one that is followed by a Cenozoic one,the two being separated by an extensional phaserelated to the formation of the Gosau basins. TheCretaceous cycle is related to the closure of a branchof Neotethys, namely the Meliata branch in the east,triggering intra-continental subduction in the EasternAlps. This event affected the Austroalpine nappe stackonly. The Cenozoic cycle, on the other hand, led tothe closing of the Alpine Tethys, parts of which arepreserved within the Penninic nappe stack; the formerCretaceous orogen now forms the upper plate.However, presently this entire Alpine nappe stack isfound in an upper plate position with respect to theeastern part of the Southern Alps where foreland-directed thrusting, linked to that within the externalDinarides, is still active. Hence Cretaceous andCenozoic Alpine nappe stacking were followed by athird episode, when the easternmost Alps became partof the Dinaridic orogen, within which they presentlyoccupy an upper-plate position.

Reference.

Schmid, S.M., Fügenschuh, B., Kissling, E. and Schuster, R.(2004). TRANSMED Transects IV, V and VI: Threelithospheric transects across the Alps and their forelands.In: Cavazza W, Roure F, Spakman W, Stampfli GM, andZiegler PA (eds). The TRANSMED Atlas: The MediterraneanRegion from Crust to Mantle. Springer Verlag.

A pdf of this paper can be downloaded at the following websitehttp://pages.unibas.ch/earth/tecto/query_main.htm?KeyPublications

ANATOMY AND GROWTH OF A MOUNTAIN BELT:THE ALPS FROM THE EARTH'S SURFACE TO THE MANTLE.

Professor Stefan M. Schmid, University of Basle

The Annual Bennett LectureDelivered in the Bennett Lecture Theatre on March 23 2009

During the development of the tectonically complex Alpine arc several continental and oceanic plates wereamalgamated. Analyses of crustal structures, derived from modern fieldwork, and geophysical deep soundingof the lithosphere-asthenosphere structure were combined into major transects through the Alps. Particularlyhigh-resolution teleseismic tomography, together with the correlation of tectonic units along strike, revealeda far more complex 3D geometry of the Alpine orogen than hitherto believed.

Volume 103 • 2009 43


OFFICERS 2008/2009

President Miss J Dawson

Chairman Mr I Pedley

Vice chairman Mrs D Thompson

Hon Teasurer Mr P. Thompson

Hon. Secretary Mrs S Walton

Hon. Minutes Sec Mrs D. Thompson

Hon Winter Programme Sec Miss J Dawson

Hon Editor Mrs M Frankum

Committee Members

Mr J Tinning

Mr P Tyler

Miss A Pinnock

Dr W R Morris (Recorder)

Mrs J Harris

Mr P Wilkinson

Co-opted Committee Members

A. Bevington, as Webmaster

This year’s committee meetings have been wellattended.

It was decided not to produce more advertisingleaflets as they produced a limited response.

The Summer Programme was devised by a subcommittee of Doreen Thompson, Sue Walton andPeter Wilkinson. There was a variety of venues butattendance was down on previous years with anaverage of ten members attending. More numbers areneeded to join the summer programme committee, soif you would like to help, please contact a committeemember.

We wish to thank Jan Dawson for her winterprogramme of interesting speakers, all of which werewell attended. Thanks are also due to DoreenThompson for her work as Minutes Secretary and toAnn Pinnock who, with the help of Sue Walton,provided the coffee at indoor meetings. We alsothank Peter Thompson for his work as Treasurer andparent Body Representative.

There is still a vacancy for someone to provideweather reports for the newsletter. If you areinterested please let Maggie Frankum know. If anyonehas any interesting articles or pictures please sendthem to Maggie Frankum for the newsletter. We alsothank Alan Bevington for his work on the website andJean V Cooper for providing a splendid buffetfollowing the AGM.

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE NATURALHISTORY SECTION


44 Volume 103 • 2009

The Winter Indoor Meetings continue to be held in the Lord Mayor’s Room which seems to suit theneeds of most members and speakers. These were held at fortnightly intervals in 2008. The speakerswere:

January 9th The Treasure of the Islands: in search Gianpierro Ferrari of Mediterranean Orchids

January 23rd Tails of India Steve Woodward

February 6th The Return of the Osprey Tim Mackrill

February 20th Ferns in Leicestershire and Rutland Andy Lear

March 5th Alpines at Home Jan Dawson

March 17th Joint Meeting with the Parent body

Kew’s Millennium Seedbank John Withall

The summer programme of outdoor field meetings was as follows:

April 20th Owston Wood Andy Lear

Grace Dieu priory Peter Wilkinson

May 16th Welford Road Cemetery – moths and bats Adrian Russell and Jenny Harris

June 18th Bradgate park – lichens Ivan Pedley

June 28th Fort Henry Terry Mitcham

July 19th Stonesby Quarry Katie Field

August 13th Wistow Ramble Sue Walton

August 29th Hambleton Peninsula – bats Jenny Harris

September 20th Bagworth Heath Doreen and Peter Thompson

October 12th Swithland Wood Fungus Foray Richard Iliffe

Joint meeting with the LFSG

Winter meetings began again on October 15th with a members’ slide and exhibition eveningfollowed by

October 29th Light Pollution and its effects on Animals Martin Morgan-Taylot

November 12th The Great Fen Project Chris Gerrard

November 26th The Soutter Memorail Lecture

A Look at the Earliest Plant Life of Earth Dr Allan Pentecost

December 10th Barn Owls Ian Langford


VOLUME 103 2009

THE LEICESTER LITERARY & PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETYFounded in 1835

www.leicesterlitandphil.org.uk

OFFICERS AND MEMBERS OF COUNCIL

President: Mr R. Gill, MA

Life Vice-PresidentsDr T.D. Ford, OBE, PhD, BSc, FGS

Mrs H.A.E. Lewis, JP, MA

Vice PresidentsMrs A. Dean, B.A.Mr B.D. Beeson

Dr M.G.F. Crowe, MA, MB, BChir, FRCGPProfessor D.P.S. Sandhu, MD, FRCS (Ed Urol), FRCS (Eng & Glas)

Hon. Secretary: Dr M. Hamill MB, BCh BAO, FRCPCH91 Kingsway Rd, Leicester. LE5 5TU

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Members of CouncilS.A. Ashraf, MA

Professor P.J. Boylan BSc, PhD, FGS, FMA, FBIM, FRSAMr J.H. Dickinson B Sc CEng, FIMMM, FGS

Professor J.C. Fothergill, BSc, MSc, PhD, CEng, BSc Eng, CPhys, FIEE M Inst P FIEEMrs A. Fuchs

Mr P. Hammersley, CBE, CEng, BSc Eng, MIMechEMr L. Lloyd-Smith, JP, DipArch, FRIBA

Mrs F. SmithsonProfessor M. Stannard, BA, MA, DPhil, FEA, FRLS

Mr M. Taylor, BA, DipTP, MA, MRTPI, IHBCDr D. Thurston, BSc, PhD.

Canon M. Wilson MA MBAThe Vice Chancellor of the University of LeicesterThe Vice Chancellor of De Montfort University*

*represented by Professor Heidi Macpherson, PhD, FRSA, FHEAOne representative of the Geology Section

One representative of the Natural History Section

Geology Section Hon. Secretary:Ms Fiona Barnaby, Cuckoo Cottage, 22 Church Lane, Dingley, Market Harborough. LE16 8PG

Natural History Section Hon. Secretary:Mrs S. Walton, 29 School Lane, Huncote, Leicester, LE9 3BD.

Independent Examiners: Mr K. Smithson, FCIB, MIMgt, FRSAMr P.E.K. Fuchs, M.A

The Not Altogether Elementary Case ofSherlock Holmes

Wife or Muse: Philip Larkin’s Love Triangle


Ernest Gimson: Archetypal Arts and Crafts Designer

The Future of the Universe

Phenomenal Fluids

Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs

The Role of the Media in PromotingCommunity Cohesion

Glimpses of Life at 142 Strand in the 1850s

Whatever became of the Industrial Revolution?

Alfred Russel Wallace and the Birds of Paradise

Growth of a Mountain Belt: Looking at the Alps

Super – Eruptions of an unusual Style

Annual Reports

'Steel Fire Dog. Image © Leicester Museums and Galleries'

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