Dullness and inactivity

The busy activity of the place occurs only ... when a fleet comes in or is about to sail, at which periods the town becomes all crowd and hurry for a few days, and then suddenly reverts to a languid intermission of dullness and inactivity.

Dr George Pinckard, 1795, describing Portsmouth

Anti Slavery

Portsmouth played its part in stopping slavery. From 1808 the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, who were tasked to stop the slave trade, operated out of Portsmouth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/6430401.stm

Christopher Hitchins

Christopher Hitchens, the Anglo American author, journalist and literary critic was born in Portsmouth, the son of a Naval officer, on 13 April 1949. In 2005 he was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual.

To link to his work: http://www.vanityfair.com/contributors/christopher-hitchens

A hot press

Press gangs were the scourge Portsmouth streets when these gangs of harsh men swept the town and scooped up any able bodied man who crossed their path regardless of marital status, dependants, home location or employment. One particularly 'hot press' occurred on 23 September 1803 when 'no protestations were listened to, and a vast number of persons were sent on board the different ships in this port ' (Portsmouth).

Sometimes even underhand methods were used. For example, a Capt Bowen made a spectacle of marching a party of marines ostenstibly to quell a riot and, when a crowd gathered to see the fun, turned on them to round up all the fit men.

East India Company

The East India Company, which had extensive interests in the Far East, India and China, used Portsmouth as a base. The Company had its own army and detachments would leave from Portsmouth together with company officials and passengers. Often these would be protected by naval escorts. The Company's involvement in the Town was such that they built repair facilities and extensive storehouses. For example, Lord Clive returning from India to Portsmouth in 1767 brought with him raw silk, redwood and saltpetre.

To find out more, read The East India Company and the Provinces in the Eighteenth Century: Portsmouth and the East India Company 1700-1815 v. 1 (Studies in British History) by James H thomas

The Siege of Lucknow

Heroes of the famous seige of Lucknow, part of the Indian Mutiny of 1857-8, are commemorated in Portsmouth. The three fields on which Havelock Park stands, located to the east of Victoria Road North, were brought in 1857 the same year as the seige, for £4,520, and the foundation stone laid a year later. The estate was named after Sir Henry Havelock who led the first relief column into Lucknow, while Sir Henry Lawrence, John Inglis, Sir James Outram and Sir Colin Campbell all gave their names to local roads.

A hanging and unusual souvenirs

On this day in 1782, a crowd reported to be somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000 strong gathered on Southsea Common, many of them having walked great distances to be there. They had come to watch David Tyrie, who had been convicted of high treason, be hanged, decapitated and disembowelled.But, when Tyrie arrived from Winchester prison, it was realised that nobody had thought to bring a rope. The executioner, with great presence of mind, acquired some from a lugger moored offshore. This gave Tyrie extra time to read his bible.

The Hampshire Chronicle reported that Tyrie was hanged for 22 minutes, his head severed from his body, his heart taken out and burned, his genitals cut off and his body quartered. The same account reported that after the body parts were buried on the beach some sailors dug up the coffin and cut the body into 1,000 pieces to distribute as souvenirs.

http://www.executedtoday.com/2011/08/24/1782-david-tyrie-the-last-hanged-drawn-and-quartered/

Nelson's First Column

This column on Portsdown Hill commemorating Admiral Lord Nelson predates a similar, and more famous, one in Trafalgar Square by 30 years. The foundation stone was laid in 1807, only two years after Nelson's death. It stands 110 foot high which together with being sited on top of the Hill has made it useful to ships navigating their way in to Portsmouth Harbour for the last 200 years. 

http://www.fareham.gov.uk/discover_local_area/whats_here/nelsonmonument.aspx

A sad year

Gates, the respected local historian, said that the year 1800 'was perhaps the saddest year Portsmouth had ever experienced'. On 6 January, 'the bakers close their ovens and refuse to bake bread, in order to induce the Magistrates to raise the assize of that article'; in September there was a 'tumultuous meeting of the populace in St George's Square, Portsea, respecting the high price of bread; and many windows broken and other damage done'. Such were the conditions that by 13 December, 'provisions (were) so scarce that servants were allowed only one quartern loaf of bread per week, and nine hundred pounds collected in Portsmouth to purchase Scotch herrings to supply to poor'.
Of course, Gates didn't know what was to come with the Blitz of World War II.

To find out more read A Portrait of Portsea by Joy Harwood

Merchant Trade

Portsmouth enjoyed a flourishing merchant trade of both national and international repute, based around the Camber, during the 1700 and 1800s. Ships from other British ports mixed with those from France, the New World, the Baltic, Portugal, the Middle East and India. The cargoes they brought included livestock, cloth, coal, cheese, timber, fish, soap, brandy, tobacco, bullion and a vast array of spices. The local community consequently became one of the most cosmopolitan in the British Isles with the townspeople daily rubbing shoulders with sailors from all over the known world.

Spiritualism

The first Spiritualist temple in Portsmouth, founded in 1901, was in Victoria Road South using the building that had previously been the School of Art. This was found not fit for purpose and was demolished in 1937 to be replaced with the present splendid temple, considered to be one of the finest in England.

Supporters who aided with the original purchase of the land included Arthur Conan Doyle who had become interested in Spiritualism while practising as a doctor in Portsmouth in the 1880s. The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, Lancelyn Green Bequest includes an enormous amount of material relating to early spiritualism which can be consulted freely at the Central Library.

Stocks

Stocks for the punishment of 'rouges and vagabonds' were placed in three areas of Portsmouth: In (Old) Portsmouth they were placed on the Common with the whipping post nearby; in Portsea the were in Ordnance Row where they stayed until as late as the 1860s, and in Kingston they stood outside the George and Dragon pub in Kingston Road.

Witches

In a deeply superstitious community accusations of witchcraft are found throughout Portsmouth history. For example, in 1688 Elizabeth Skipper was in trouble for bewitching Goody Thompson, as well as hitting her and pinching her arm. Famously one of the the last so-called ‘Witchcraft’ trials to take place in England originated in Portsmouth. In 1944 the spiritualist medium Helen Duncan was arrested here for ‘pretending to hold communications with the spirits of deceased persons’ to defraud members of the public. As Helen, during her séances, had foreseen wartime naval disasters before the information had been made public, the Establishment was nervous that she would release other national secrets. A Portsmouth court committed her to the Old Bailey, where she was tried and convicted under the ancient Witchcraft Act of 1735. This story has spawned a variety of books and television programmes.

A ratepayer and the Infant School

An anonymous ratepayer writing to the Hampshire Telegraph in 1869 gave the following hair-raising description of St Mary's Street:

of 'the seventy-four houses, seven are occupied by licensed victuallers, sixteen are beer houses, fourteen are licensed refreshment houses, whilst nearly all the houses in the many courts and alleys adjoining are rented by beer-house keepers and let in rooms to the unfortuante wretches who frequent their vile dens... One scoundrel has the audacity to call his house the 'Infant School' (due to the age of the girls supplied there).

For more read the excellent Portsmouth Paper 38, Public Houses and Beerhouses in Nineteenth Century Portsmouth by Riley and Eley.

Quakers

'If I killed a hundred Quakers, I do not fear to be hanged'. So boasted a guard in Portsmouth during the 1660s. A contemporary record similarly shows in 1660 that William Rutter 'was taken at a Meeting in Portsmouth, was committed by the Mayor to a close stinking prison, in which through the coldness of the place, and want of air, he fell sick and died within a month'.

The Quakers settled in Portsmouth in the 1650s but as the above shows, they experienced very harsh treatment. The present meeting house is in Northwood Road, Hilsea.

White Swan Fields

These stood behind the current New Theatre Royal and the White Swan Tavern where there were extensive ponds frequented by swans. They were perhaps cared for by the nearby monks of Magdalen Chapel. The ponds provided fresh water for the town of Portsmouth but have now vanished beneath modern buildings although flooding of basements is a frequent occurance in this area.

A dismal spot

"A dismal spot where foot-pads and cut-throats roamed at night, and a murderer hung in chains on the edge of the shingle. Near Lumps Fort was a great morass. Windmills stood in the flat landscape, and the jaw bones of a stranded whale served as a gate to one of the fields."

W L Wyllie R.A. describing Southsea Common

Salubrity of Southsea

‘Sunny Southsea – so called because of the illustrious office of the day is very much in evidence here. Southsea has made rapid advances in public favour as a watering place. In 1899 when the British Medical Association held its annual meeting in Portsmouth, emphatic testimony was borne by distinguished members of the profession to the salubrity of Southsea. Under the genial stimulus of its breezes from the sea, visitors speedily recover their pristine health and are then able to appreciate its diversified features of interest.’

Extract from the British Medical Conference handbook, 1904

Beating the Boys

It was formerly the custom, at certain intervals of time, to perambulate the bounds of each parish, a ceremony familiarity styled, 'beating the bounds'. Litanies and prayers were said for the increase of corn and fruit; tokens of boundaries were set up or restored, and the old curse was promounced against him who should remove his neighbour's landmark. The old custom of beating the boys at each boundary mark was with the object of impressng the parochial limits on their youthful minds. Gifts were sometimes subtituted for the whippings. The bounds of Portsmouth were beaten as late as 1813, and Portsea, 1824.

Taken from Portsmouth in the Past, Gates, 1926

HMS Warrior

The ship that really did rule the waves is 150 years old today.

Find more on the link: http://www.hmswarrior.org/history