An idle browse led me to this site from which the above photo is taken - the grave is that of one of the English O'Brienities, John Days. He emigrated to the US in his twenties and became a politician of some note in California. He came from Hull and is buried close to - not the North Sea, but the Pacific Ocean.
Here's what the site has to say: John M. Days was born in Hull, Yorkshire, England, the son of a shoe maker. His father died when John was young, and the family ended up in England's workhouses for the poor. John had been skilled as a tailor by trade. He further educated himself and became active in labor and politics during his early years in England, where he also became a follower of James "Bronterre" O'Brien. In 1854, he sailed to America. He lived for a brief time in Missouri and Oregon before settling in Grass Valley, California. While living in Grass Valley, John worked as a tailor, was a school teacher for a short time, helped establish a town library, and practiced politics. He later became a member of the California State Assembly 21st District (Nevada Co), 1867-69, 1871-73; delegate to Republican National Convention from California, 1868; Clerk in Superior Court (S.F.) circa 1880; elected CA State District Senator, 13th District (Santa Clara), 1885; Attorney-at-Law, and Deputy County Clerk 1889-1891. John was a political and personal acquaintance of Henry George, and is mentioned in the book, "The Life of Henry George". It was in Grass Valley that he forged his most lasting relationship - that with Aaron Clark and his family[1]. From 1870 until his death in 1901, John lived with the Clark family in Grass Valley and in San Francisco. 8 Months after Aaron's death in 1893, John and Aaron's widow, Martha[2], married and moved to Summerland, Santa Barbara, CA. [1]Lincoln Clark, son of Aaron and Martha Clark, who later became John's step-son, was shipwrecked on Pitcairn Island for 6 months in 1881-82. He later returned to Pitcairn in 1909 with his son, Roy Palmer Clark, where they both remained until the end of their lives. John had been a part of the Clark family since the time Lincoln was born. [2]After John's death Martha wed Amariah "Homer" Buelle Wheelock. It's is remarkable that O'Brien has a connection of sorts with Pitcairn, one of the world's smallest and most remote human settlements. There's quite a few Clarks on Pitcairn! John Days made a visit to London in 1868, by which time he was already a member of the California State Assembly. This prompted the most remarkable of the O'Brienite ventures, the attempt to establish a cooperative colony in Kansas. It didn't work, but about 200 would-be colonists made the journey out to the US.
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A postcard from 110 years ago of a military camp in southern Sri Lanka (once Ceylon) - the main use of which, to this date, had been as a detention camp for Boer prisoners of war. Diyatalawa is 5,000 feet up in the central highlands of Sri Lanka. Indeed, it's described as a hill station - the sort of place where people came to escape the suffocating heat and humidity of the plains.
The British established a military training base here in the 1880s which was expanded hugely to take in Boer prisoners (I've blogged before about the British policy of dispersing Boer PoWs across the Empire) in the early years of last century. This camp when enlarged could take up 5,000 prisoners - and you can see from this image how extensive the base had become. There are other photos of the camp, and some its detainees, here. It's curious that a detention camp appears in a series of postcards. But clearly there was demand to be met. The postmark is 1910 and stamped Ratnapura, the centre of Sri Lanka's gem trade, about seventy miles away. Once established as a detention camp, that the role Diyatalawa reverted to in both the First and Second World Wars. In the latter conflict, enemy aliens - including German nationals in Hong Kong and Singapore - were held here; another section of the camp housed, unlikely as it seems, Italian PoWs until the threat of Japanese attack prompted their evacuation to India. It's always nice when these cards have a message on the other side. There are a couple of Edward VII stamps ... on the front not the rear of the card. What I don't quite understand - given the absence of an address - is how the postcard reached its intended destination. What a fantastic piece of political ephemera! It dates from the early 1640s, when tension was rising between King Charles 1 and Parliament. (Spoiler alert: it didn't end well for the king).
This broadside dates from 3 January 1642 (yes, I know it says 1641 but at this time England used 'Lady Day' dating when the date moved forward from one year to the next on Lady Day, that's 25th March). Although it cites a resolution of the House of Commons and was published over the name of Henry Elsynge, the clerk to the House, it's not an offiicial Parliamentary publication but the work of a small publisher/bookseller in the Old Bailey district of London. The content of the broadside is remarkable - a bold assertion that MPs have the right to resist arrest unless that detention is authorised by Parliament itself. 'And this House doth further declare, That if any person whatsoever shall offer to arrest or detain the Person of any Member of this House, without first acquainting this House therewith, and receiving further Order from this House: That it is lawful for such Member, or any Person, to assist him, and to stand upon his, and their guard of defence, and to make resistance, according to the Protestation taken to defend the Priviledges of Parliament.' At this time, Parliament was concerned about the King's determination to raise funds for the developing war in Scotland and his reluctance to call Parliament. The king reckoned that some outspoken Puritan MPs were in league with his enemies in Scotland and were intent on a prosecution of the Queen. The day after the broadside, the king - accompanied by about eighty armed soldiers - violated Parliamentary privilege and entered the chamber of the House of Commons. He was seeking the arrest of five MPs he regarded as particularly troublesome, including John Pym and John Hampden. They had all been tipped off by the French ambassador and had hopped on a barge and travelled downriver to the City. As word of the king's action spread, some Londoners came onto the streets bearing arms to resist the king and his troops if, as rumoured, he headed to the City in pursuit of his Parliamentary quarry. When Charles asked Speaker Lenthall about the whereabouts of the five members, the Speaker replied in one of the bravest - and most renowned - remarks ever uttered in Parliament : "May it please your majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here; and I humbly beg your majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your majesty is pleased to demand of me." The king failed to arrest any of the five MPs - and they returned in triumph to Westminster the following day. Within a week or so, the king withdrew from London to Hampton Court and later to Oxford. He had lost his capital. Charles only returned to London seven years later, having lost the war with the army of Parliament, for his trial and execution. So this broadside is from the moment that the row between monarch and Parliament started veering towards civil war. Although Karl Marx was living in London when he published the first volume of his commanding work Das Kapital in 1867, it appeared in German not in English. Indeed, it was another twenty years before the volume appeared in an English translation - by which time it had already long been available in Russian and French. But some extracts from Das Kapital were published in English in the year of Marx's death - 1883. They appeared in a new and none too well known radical monthly To-Day, which was published by the Modern Press, an imprint later associated with the left-wing Social Democratic Federation. Ernest Belfort Bax was the editor of To-Day, but I'm not clear whether he was the founding editor. The journal does not make clear who was responsible for the translation - though the second of the two extracts states that the translation was made not from the original German but from the French edition. The English translation which appeared in 1887 was the work of Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, the latter Marx's son-in-law, with Marx's great friend and collaborator Frederick Engels keeping a close eye on the edition. Aveling and his wife, Eleanor Marx, were both contributors to To-Day in its early years and they are likely to have had a role in the extracts which appeared in the journal's first two issues
The brief extracts published in To-Day are perhaps a footnote in Marx's publishing history. But they are nevertheless the first appearance in English of Marx's most enduring work of political economy, and so the first chance that an English-speaking audience had to get their heads round the fairly abstract arguments that Marx advanced. |
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