Mary Moore Birmingham Blue Badge Tourist Guide (2024)

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16/06/2024

A Salute To The Salvation Army
Jean Simmons as a Salvation Army sergeant who falls for Marlon Brando in the 1955 movie, Guys and Dolls.

by Ray Setterfield
June 16, 1880 — The distinctive Salvation Army women’s bonnets were worn for the first time on this day in a procession through London’s East End.
Fifteen years earlier, Methodists William and Catherine Booth had decided that the changes they wanted to make in society could not be achieved simply by delivering sermons from a church pulpit: they needed to get amongst the people on the streets and offer direct help.
Their first meetings were held outside the Blind Beggar pub in East London in June, 1865, which led to the birth of a new organisation, The Christian Mission. It grew rapidly and in 1878 the name was changed to the Salvation Army, the organisation adopting a quasi-military structure with officers and members wearing a military-style uniform.
This came about through the belief that converts became soldiers in an army, fighting against human suffering. They were at war – on the side of the poor and destitute.
Their work included providing shelters for the homeless, running soup kitchens, setting up rescue homes for women escaping domestic abuse and prostitution, and even offering a family tracing service.The Salvation Army also campaigned for better working conditions and was responsible for the world’s first labour exchange – opened in 1890 to help people find work.
The United States was the start of the Army’s worldwide expansion when in 1879 Salvationist Amos Shirley travelled to Philadelphia with his family. By late 1880 operations had been extended to Australia, the hungry of Adelaide being offered food.
The following year Catherine Booth-Clibborn, daughter of the founders, moved to France and started to hold meetings in Paris. Now expansion really took off and by 1883 Salvationists were working in Switzerland, Sweden, Sri Lanka, South Africa, New Zealand and Canada.
Indeed, as a national charitable organisation that employs more than 10,000 people in over 400 communities across the country, the Salvation Army is today Canada’s largest non-governmental provider of social services.
But back in the 1880s, new types of social work began. In 1883 a prison-gate home was opened in Melbourne, Australia, to support prisoners re-entering the community, and in 1885 the age of consent was raised in the UK after a campaign by the Army.
The first Salvation Army hospital was opened in 1897 at Nagercoil, India. There are now tens of hospitals worldwide, plus thousands of schools, health projects, sanitation work and other social services.
William Booth was born in the “Robin Hood city” of Nottingham in 1829. By the time of his death in 1912, Salvationists were working in 58 countries, while today the figure is more than 130.
The Army has more than 1.5 million members dedicated to bringing salvation to the poor, the destitute, and the hungry “by meeting their physical and spiritual needs.” In addition, thousands of volunteers around the world help the cause.
Apart from their many other activities the volunteers run what is known in the UK as charity shops, and in the US as thrift stores. These retail outlets raise considerable funds for the Army’s charitable activities.
* In March, 1966, the Blind Beggar pub was back in the news over an incident that could not have been further removed from its Salvation Army connection. Gangster Ronnie Kray shot dead a member of a rival gang who was sitting at the bar. The murder was one of the crimes that led to Kray being sentenced to life imprisonment.

16/06/2024

Photo:1915 The foundation of the Women's Institute, regularly referred to as simply the WI. Its two aims were to revitalise rural communities and to encourage women to become more involved in producing food during the First World War. It is now the largest women’s voluntary organisation in the UK.

On This Day - 16th June

1567 Mary, Queen of Scots, imprisoned in Lochleven Castle, Scotland.

1722. English general, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, died.

1779 Spain declared war on Britain, and the Great Siege of Gibraltar began. In February 1783 the siege was lifted and the French and Spanish troops retired, disheartened and defeated, after three years and seven months' conflict. The final peace treaty left Gibraltar with the British, but the victorious British garrison sustained a loss of 1,231 men, and expended 8,000 barrels of gunpowder.

1824 The RSPCA Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded.

1871 The University Tests Act allows students to enter the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Durham without religious tests, except for courses in theology.

1880. The distinctive Salvation Army ladies' bonnets were worn for the first time when they marched in procession in London.

1883 The Victoria Hall theatre panic in Sunderland killed 183 children. At the end of the show an announcement was made that children with certain numbered tickets would be presented with a prize upon exit. Worried about missing out on the treats, many of the estimated 1,100 children in the gallery stampeded toward the staircase leading downstairs. Those at the front became trapped, and were crushed by the weight of the crowd behind them.

1890. Stan Laurel, (Arthur Jefferson) English born comedy actor of Laurel and Hardy fame, was born, at Ulverston. See the statue of Laurel and Hardy outside the Coronation Hall theatre in Uverston, Cumbria.

1912 Enoch Powell, British politician was born.

1915 The foundation of the Women's Institute, regularly referred to as simply the WI. Its two aims were to revitalise rural communities and to encourage women to become more involved in producing food during the First World War. It is now the largest women’s voluntary organisation in the UK.

1930 Mixed bathing was permitted for the first time in Hyde Park, London.

1958 Yellow ‘No Waiting’ lines were introduced to British streets.

1963 Soviet space mission Vostok 6 is launched with Valentina Tereshkova onboard, who becomes the 1st woman in space.
1971. Death of the broadcaster and former Director General of the BBC, John Reith.

1982 South Wales Coalfield came to a standstill as miners went on strike in support of health workers who were demanding a 12% pay rise.

1982. England international Bryan Robson scored a goal against France in Bilbao after just 27 seconds of the game. It was the quickest World Cup goal in history.

1992 An explosive new book about the Princess of Wales, including claims that she attempted su***de, was published by author Andrew Morton.

1998. Judges in America upheld the decision to convict British au pair Louise Woodward of manslaughter and the passing of a reduced sentence for the killing of Matthew Eappen - the young boy left in her care in Massachusetts.

2015 TV personality and real estate mogul Donald Trump launches his campaign for the Republican nomination for US President at Trump Towers.

2016. Jo Cox, the Labour MP for Batley and Spen, died after being shot and stabbed multiple times in Birstall, West Yorkshire. On 23rd November 2016 local man Thomas Mair was found guilty of murder and other offences connected to the killing. Mair was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order.

2017 US President Donald Trump reinstates Cuban travel and business restrictions after they were loosened by President Obama.

2020 Support from Manchester United player Marcus Rashford and others forces UK Government to make U-turn on summer school meal vouchers.

2022 Ninety-year-old US cosmetics company Revlon files for bankruptcy, blaming supply issues and rising costs.

2023 Scientific teams in the UK and Israel claim to have grown synthetic human embryos equivalent to that of 14-day-old natural embryos sparking controversy.

2023 The Recording Academy announces new rules for Grammy Awards aimed at AI use - stating “only human creators” can win but a work containing AI eligible as long as human input is meaningful.

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15/06/2024

Poll Tax Triggers the Peasants' Revolt

King Richard addresses the peasants. Wat Tyler lies wounded behind him. Illustration from a medieval manuscript
by Ray Setterfield
June 15, 1381 — Several centuries before Margaret Thatcher, the first poll tax riot rocked England. It was called the Peasants' Revolt or the Great Uprising.
Life was tough for peasants in the 14th Century. They belonged to their local lords and had few, if any, freedoms. Known as “villeins”, they worked virtually without pay for their lord and one of their denied freedoms meant they could marry only if he approved.
The Black Death plague, which swept through the country killing about half the population between 1348 to 1350, ironically brought some relief for the peasants. It meant simply that there were fewer of them and landowners, faced with a shortage of manpower, had to pay up to secure workers.
The competition for labour meant that wages went up and the profits of landowners went down. To the privileged this represented a state of anarchy and it was certainly not a situation that the authorities would allow to continue. So new laws were passed: the Ordinance of Labourers in 1349 and the Statute of Labourers in 1351.
Both laws were designed to fix wages at pre-plague levels and made it a crime to refuse work or break a contract, the right of local lords to prevent serfs leaving their manors being endorsed. When the laws were later toughened, transgressors faced branding as well as imprisonment.
If the peasants were having a rough time, so too was the teenage King Richard II on whose young shoulders heavy responsibilities were laid. Not least solving the problem of finding money for the continuing conflict against the French.
In 1337, Richard’s father, King Edward III, had kicked off what was to be known as the Hundred Years' War by demanding the French throne. A poll tax to help pay for the conflict had been introduced but the money raised had been quickly used up mainly by the war and now the cupboard was looking bare again.
So in 1380 Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, came up with the idea of a new poll tax. Such a tax was more crippling for the poor because it was levied not on a household, but on the individual people in it. Sudbury called for three groats (one shilling) per head for everyone over the age of fifteen.
In his 1984 book The English Rebels, Charles Poulsen wrote: “A shilling was a considerable sum for a working man, almost a week's wages. A family might include old persons past work and other dependents, and the head of the family became liable for one shilling on each of their 'polls'. This was basically a tax on the labouring classes.
“There was a maximum payment of twenty shillings from men whose families and households numbered more than twenty, thus ensuring that the rich paid less than the poor."
All this could have been almost designed to spark rebellion – and it certainly did. Groups of workers across the country formed themselves into bands of protesters, especially in Kent and Essex, the big two counties neighbouring London.
A massive contingent from Kent marched to London wreaking destruction along the way and were joined by the Essex protesters, bringing their total to somewhere between sixty and a hundred thousand.
They were to be led by Wat Tyler. Very little is known about him but according to John Stow, an English historian and antiquarian of the time, Tyler's fourteen-year-old daughter, Alice, was sexually assaulted by a poll tax-collector.
Stow wrote: "The mother hearing her daughter screech out, and seeing how in vain she struggled against him, being therefore grievously offended, she cried out also and ran into the street among her neighbours, clamouuring about that there was one within that would ravish her daughter.”
Tyler was not at home but rushed back when he heard the news, found the tax collector and “gave him such a knock upon the head that he broke his skull and his brains flew about the room.”
This was a hanging matter so possibly thinking “in for a penny, in for a pound,” Tyler joined the poll tax rebels who were on the march.
Noting “the strength and vigour of his personality,” it was not long before the charismatic Tyler became the peasants' leader, according to Hyman Fagan in his 1938 book, Nine Days That Shook England.
One of his first acts was to break radical preacher John Ball out of jail. Ball, who had been imprisoned for heresy by the Archbishop of Canterbury, believed in everyone being equal and had called for an end to all titles except that of king.
Whipped up by the preaching of Ball, who said they should “throw away the evil lords”, the rebels were demanding that all men should be free and equal; that laws should be less harsh; and there should be a fairer distribution of wealth.
Upon being told of their approach to the capital, the King, along with his royal household and the Archbishop of Canterbury, moved to the Tower of London for safety. But Richard agreed to meet Tyler and other leading rebels just outside the city at Mile End.
At this meeting on June 14, the King agreed to all of the rebels’ demands and promised to end both serfdom and feudalism.
But while the meeting was taking place, some rebels broke into the Tower and dragged out Richard’s supporters. The Archbishop of Canterbury and a number of people from the royal household were beheaded. At the same time other rebels roamed the streets looking for and killing anyone thought to be sympathetic to the feudal system.
The next day – June 15 – there was another meeting between Tyler and the King, again outside the city but this time at Smithfield.
Tyler put forward another list of demands that included the removal of the lordship system, the distribution of the wealth of the Church to the poor and a reduction in the number of bishops.
There are various accounts of what happened next. According to the 14th Century Anonimalle Chronicle of St Mary’s, Richard said he would do what he could. But one of the King’s party then shouted out that Tyler was a common thief.
"For these words,” the Chronicle says, “Wat wanted to strike the valet with his dagger, and would have killed him in the King's presence; but because he tried to do so, the Mayor of London, William of Walworth, arrested him.
“Wat stabbed the mayor with his dagger in the body in great anger. But, as it pleased God, the mayor was wearing armour and took no harm. He struck back at the said Wat, giving him a deep cut in the neck, and then a great blow on the head. And during the scuffle a valet of the King's household drew his sword and ran Wat two or three times through the body.
“Wat was carried . . . to hospital . . . and put to bed. The mayor went there and found him, and had him carried out to the middle of Smithfield, in the presence of his companions, and had him beheaded."
As the peasants raised their weapons ready to avenge their leader the King rode over to them and spoke for some time. It is not known what he said but his words did the trick and the rebels agreed to go home.
Richard did not keep his promises, saying they had been made under duress. Serfdom was not abolished and the King’s soldiers put down the revolts. Hundreds of rebels were hanged, including John Ball. In the end the peasants were still under the control of the nobles – just as they had been before the uprising.
Later, a deputation of peasants seeking clarity about their position was admitted before the unforgiving King. According to chronicler Thomas Walsingham he told them:
"Rustics you were and rustics you are still. You will remain in bo***ge, not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive with mind, strength and goods to suppress you so that the rigour of your servitude will be an example to posterity."

15/06/2024

PHOTO: 1911 The birth of the Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry, English Anglican cleric, railway enthusiast, and children's author. He was the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine.
On This Day - 15th June

1215. King John agreed to put his royal seal on the Magna Carta, or Great Charter of English liberties, at Runnymede, near Windsor. The document was the first to be forced onto an English King by a group of his subjects. It was essentially a peace treaty between John and his barons, guaranteed the nobles their feudal privileges and promised to maintain the nation's laws. The Baron of Pontefract, John De Lacy, was one of twenty-five barons who forced King John into agreeing the document, hence the banner and £30,000 monument in Pontefract, West Yorkshire.

1330 The birth of Edward the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III. He married his cousin Joan, ‘The Fair Maid of Kent’, who gave him two sons, one of whom was the future Richard II.

1381. Wat Tyler - leader of the Peasants' Revolt, was killed at Smithfield in London. Richard II had agreed to meet the leaders of the revolt, and listen to their demands. What was said between Tyler and the king is largely conjecture but by all accounts the unarmed Tyler was suddenly attacked without warning and killed by the Lord Mayor of London, Sir William Walworth, and John Cavendish, a member of the king's group. This unprovoked betrayal of the truce flag and Tyler's killing threw the people into a panic. Not being organised as a military force, they broke ranks and began to flee for their lives.

1825 The foundation stone of the New London Bridge was laid by ‘the grand old’ Duke of York. It now spans an artificial lake in Arizona.

1860 British nurse Florence Nightingale, famous for tending British wounded during the Crimean War, opened a school for nurses at St Thomas's Hospital in London.

1876 The opening of the Newcastle Swing Bridge, designed and constructed by Sir W.G. Armstrong who lived at Cragside. The bridge was first used for road traffic On This Day in 1876 and opened for river traffic on the 17th July in the same year. At the time of its construction it was the world's largest swing bridge.

1909. Representatives from England, Australia and South Africa met at Lords and formed the Imperial Cricket Conference. It was renamed the International Cricket Conference in 1965. The ICC has 105 members including 10 Full Members that play official Test matches.

1910. British explorer Captain Robert Scott set sail on his expedition to reach the South Pole. This Antarctic 100 memorial at Cardiff Bay overlooks the point from which Scott's ship the SS Terra Nova left Cardiff on its ill-fated voyage.

1911 The birth of the Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry, English Anglican cleric, railway enthusiast, and children's author. He was the creator of Thomas the Tank Engine, the central figure in his acclaimed railway stories. Awdry was born at Ampfield vicarage near Romsey and his father was vicar of Ampfield church. In 1940, he took a curacy at St Nicolas Church, Kings Norton, Birmingham where he lived until 1946.

1928. The House of commons voted to fix the date of Easter. However, a clause in the Bill allowed the consideration of the opinions of all the major churches and the Act was never put in force.

1929 British made Bentleys occupied the first four places at the finish of the Le Mans 24 hour race in France.

1940. World War II: Operation Ariel began and allied troops started to evacuate France, following Germany's takeover of Paris and most of the nation.

1971. Opposition grew to Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher's plans to end free school milk for children over the age of seven and some Labour controlled councils threatened to put up the rates in order to continue supplying free milk.

1993. James Hunt, English racing driver and 1976 Formula One world champion died from a heart attack, aged 45. His charisma and charm both on and off the track brought a whole new fanbase to the sport of Formula One.

1996. An IRA bomb, the biggest ever to go off on the British mainland, devastated the centre of Manchester. Miraculously no-one was killed but 200 people were taken to hospital. The explosion caused £100 million worth of damage.

1998 Britain introduced a £2 coin.

2013 Twenty-seven people were treated in hospital after an amphibious tourist craft sank in Liverpool's Albert Dock (Note: - the dock was given Royal status on 6th June 2018). It was the second sinking involving one of the vessels. Six days later the firm (Yellow Duckmarine went into administration. In 2012. the Queen and Prince Philip had been given a tour of the dock on one of the vehicles during her Diamond Jubilee tour.

2015 800 year anniversary of "the birthplace of modern democracy", the signing of the Magna Carta by King John at Runymede, England.

2015 Remains of a 2,000 year old women dubbed "the sleeping beauty" are announced discovered in Northern Ethiopia from ancient kingdom of Aksum

2017 Scotland Yard launches criminal inquiry and British Prime Minister Theresa May announces a public inquiry a day after the Grenfell Tower fire

2018 Glasgow School of Art, designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh burns down, four years after a previous fire.

2018 Physicist Stephen Hawking's ashes are interred in Westminster Abbey, London, between the remains of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin.

2018 World Cup: Portugal 3. Spain 3 - Cristiano Renaldo scores hat-trick - 4th player to score in 4 different WC's - 1st to score in 8 consecutive major tournaments.

2020 In landmark decision US Supreme Court rules 6-3 that gay and transgender workers cannot be discriminated against in the workplace.

2021 US death toll from COVID-19 tops 600,000 (Johns Hopkins), with 65% of adults vaccinated with at least one dose.

2022 Black Death, the 14th century plague, originated in Kyrgyzstan, according to new DNA research taken from burials at Lake Issyk Kul.

2023 Record-breaking outbreak of dengue fever in Peru has caused 248 deaths and over 146,000 cases, forcing Health Minister Rosa Gutiérrez, to resign.

2023 Water pumped from underground reservoirs has shifted earth's axis at the North Pole by 4.36 cm a year, with over 2 trillion tons of water extracted 1993-2010.

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14/06/2024

Photo: 1982 Argentine forces surrendered at Port Stanley, ending the Falklands War. 255 Britons and 652 Argentines died in the conflict.

On This Day - 14th June

1381 Richard II met leaders of Wat Tyler's Peasants' Revolt on Blackheath. The Tower of London was stormed by rebels who entered without resistance. The revolt later came to be seen as a mark of the beginning of the end of serfdom in medieval England. Although the revolt itself was a failure it increased awareness in the upper classes of the need for the reform of feudalism in England and the appalling misery felt by the lower classes as a result of their enforced near-slavery.

1645 The Battle of Naseby (Northamptonshire) was fought. It was the key battle of the first English Civil War. 12,000 Royalist forces of King Charles I were beaten by 15,000 Parliamentarian soldiers commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell.

1690 English King William III's army lands at Carrickfergus in Ireland.

1789. English Captain William Bligh and 18 others, cast adrift from the H.M.S. Bounty, reached the island of Timor (Southeast Asia) after travelling nearly 4,000 miles in a small, open boat. The Bounty had been sailing from Tahiti when crew members mutinied. In 1806 Bligh was appointed Governor of New South Wales in Australia, with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the New South Wales Corps regiment. This led to the Rum Rebellion, during which Bligh was placed under arrest on 26th January 1808.

1822. Englishman Charles Babbage proposed an automatic, mechanical calculator (he called it a difference engine). He is considered a 'father of the computer' and is credited with inventing the first mechanical computer that eventually led to more complex designs.

1919. At 14.13 GMT, Captain John Alcock and Lt. Arthur Whitten-Brown took off from Newfoundland on the first non-stop transatlantic flight to Galway, Ireland, in a Vickers Vimy. They landed safely 16 hours later, on the 15th and claimed a £10,000 prize from the Daily Mail. They were eventually knighted by King George V. When Alcock was killed in an air crash in France in December 1919 his partner, Brown, never flew again.
1924 Test Cricket debuts of English players Herbert Sutcliffe and Maurice Tate in 1st Test England v South Africa at Edgbaston.

1928 The death of the British suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst. Emmeline and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia lived for 10 years at 62 Nelson Street, Manchester. It was the birthplace of the Suffragette movement and is now the Pankhurst Centre.

1936 The death of the author G.K. Chesterton, well known for his fictional priest-detective Father Brown who is featured in a series of 53 short stories. They were made into a TV series, filmed in the village of Blockley (north Cotswolds) and primarily at St. Peter & St. Paul Church.

1940 Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp opens in N**i controlled Poland with Polish POWs, later expanded to include civilian Jews and gypsies (approx. 3 million would die within its walls).

1941 Estonia loses 11,000 inhabitants as a consequence of mass deportations into Siberia.

1944 World War II: After several failed attempts, the British Army abandoned Operation Perch, its plan to capture the German-occupied town of Caen. Caen was a major Allied objective in the early stages of the invasion of northwest Europe but a combination of fierce German resistance and failures at the British command level foiled the operation before its objectives were achieved.

1946. John Logie Baird, Scottish inventor who developed television died.

1968. British yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnson set out to sail solo around the world.

1970. Manchester United footballer Bobby Charlton played his 106th and last international match for England against West Germany in the World Cup finals in Mexico. His first game had been in April 1958 against Scotland.

1972 Hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers faced flight delays and cancellations as pilots threatened to strike over hijack fears.

1976. Former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson received a knighthood.

1982 Argentine forces surrendered at Port Stanley, ending the Falklands War. 255 Britons and 652 Argentines died in the conflict. See pictures of the Falklands Memorial in Holy Trinity Church, Hull and a memorial which centres on a five-tonne rock from the Falkland Islands, a gift from the islanders.

1995. Pauline Clare, 47, became the first woman to be appointed chief constable in Britain.

1997 Queen Elizabeth II birthday honours included a George Medal for teacher Lisa Potts, survivor of a machete attack at her school (1996) and a posthumous Queen's Gallantry medal for headmaster Philip Lawrence murdered outside his school in December 1995.

2013. Airbus A350, the newest aircraft from European planemaker Airbus successfully completed its maiden test flight. The plane, seen as vital to the future of Airbus is a direct competitor to US rival Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.

2016. Rochdale Council re-opened the River Roch (which runs below the town centre), to expose the 14th century bridge. Seven bridges had been joined together for a distance of 446 metres in the early 1900s when tram lines were extended to the town, making it the widest bridge in Europe.

2017. A fire in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block at North Kensington, West London caused 72 deaths. The fire started accidentally in a fridge-freezer on the fourth floor and the building burned for about 60 hours. The rapid spread of the fire destroyed the building and was thought to have been accelerated by the building's exterior cladding, which at the time was of a common type in widespread use. A full inquiry into the fire was opened on 21st May 2018.

2018 US government confirms 1500 boys being held separated from their parents in Casa Padre, shelter facility for illegal immigrants in a former Walmart in Brownsville, Texas.

2019 Swiss women hold a national strike over the country's slow pace towards equality.
2022 First controversial UK flight to take asylum seekers to Rwanda cancelled after last-minute legal ruling from European Court of Human Rights of "real risk of irreversible harm”.

2022 Last part of the world's largest floating restaurant, the Jumbo Kingdom seafood restaurant, leaves Hong Kong after 46 years (sinks four days later near the Paracel islands Islands).

2023 Fossil bones found in Tam Pà Ling (Cave of the Monkeys), Laos, dated to 86,000 years, are oldest known examples of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in South-East Asia.

2023 Phosphates discovered on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. Last of essential building blocks of life found there (others carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur) raising possibility of extraterrestrial life

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14/06/2024

War Breaks Out Behind Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe as painted in 1853 by Alanson Fisher. Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery

by Ray Setterfield
June 14, 1811 — It seems unlikely that the strait-laced daughter of a preacher, herself married to a clergyman, could have been a trigger for the bloody and bitter American Civil War. But that was the fate of Harriet Beecher Stowe who was born on this day.
Her best-known novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, was a heart-wrenching account of the conditions faced by enslaved African Americans based on her own observations and research. It was immediately seized upon by slavery abolitionists to strengthen their cause, at the same time being furiously denounced by leading figures in the Southern states.
The book certainly enhanced anti-slavery feelings considerably; so much so that historians later cited it as one of the reasons behind the American Civil War.
The author was born in Connecticut as Harriet Elisabeth Beecher, the sixth of eleven children. Her father, Lyman, was an outspoken Presbyterian preacher, while her mother, Roxanna, was deeply religious. Tragically, she would die when Harriet was just five years old. Three of her brothers became preachers.
Harriet moved with the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1832 when she was 21. There, she was separated only by the Ohio River from Kentucky – a slave state. She met and talked with runaway slaves and learned about life in the South from them, from friends, and after making visits there.
Soon she met the Rev. Calvin Ellis Stowe, a widower, whom she married in 1836. Like Harriet, he fiercely opposed slavery and on various occasions the couple illegally housed fugitive slaves in their home.
In 1851, Harriet’s 18-month-old son died. The tragedy helped her understand the heartbreak that slave mothers suffered when their children were wrenched from their arms and sold. She wrote: "Having experienced losing someone so close to me, I can sympathise with all the poor, powerless slaves at the unjust auctions.”
Calvin and Harriet had moved to Brunswick, Maine, and it was there that she began writing her novel. After newspaper serialisation it was published in book form in 1852 under the title “Uncle Tom’s Cabin Or Life Among The Lowly.” It sold 300,000 copies in its first year and in that time 300 babies in Boston alone were named after one of the book’s major characters, Eva.
In the New York Times Book Review, a critic wrote that Harriet had “baptized with holy fire myriads who before cared nothing for the bleeding slave.”
But in the South slave owners felt attacked and were infuriated. They clung to their belief that slavery was necessary for the good of the economy and that slaves were inferior people who were unable to look after themselves.
After the success of the book made her internationally famous, Harriet wrote to a friend: “I am a little bit of a woman – somewhat more than forty, about as thin and dry as a pinch of s***f; never very much to look at in my best of days, and looking like a used-up article now.”
But she was not used-up. Harriet went on to write 30 books, including novels, travel memoirs, articles and collections of letters and was to be described by some as one of the most influential women of the 19th century.
Her final days came two years after those of her husband. Harriet died aged 85, probably from dementia. At the time she was staying in Hartford, Connecticut, and one of her neighbours was Mark Twain. He wrote of her:
Her mind had decayed, and she was a pathetic figure. She wandered about all the day long in the care of a muscular Irish woman. [In] our neighborhood the doors always stood open in pleasant weather. Mrs. Stowe entered them at her own free will, and as she was always softly slippered and generally full of animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises, and she liked to do it.

She would slip up behind a person who was deep in dreams and musings and fetch a war whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes.
And she had other moods. Sometimes we would hear gentle music in the drawing-room and would find her there at the piano singing ancient and melancholy songs with infinitely touching effect.
Harriet would probably have rated her invitation to meet President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, just after the Civil War began, as one of her life’s major highlights.
There is no official record of what was said at the meeting but there are accounts of much joviality, and according to Harriet’s son the President greeted her with the words: "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!”

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