Vanessa Collingridge and the team answer listener’s historical queries and celebrate the way in which we all ‘make’ history.
Programme 12
16 December 2008
Vanessa Collingridge and the team explore themes from Britain’s past thanks to queries raised by listener’s own historical research.
Ned Kelly
Listener Ronald Land’s great, grand uncle was Superintendent John Sadleir who was one of the policeman who arrested the Australian outlaw Ned Kelly in June 1880. Ronald is interested to find out how it is that Kelly has gone down in Australian folk-legend – yet his relative is forgotten.
Making History consulted Professor Graham Seal Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Australia, Asia and the Pacific at Curtin University of Technology. Professor Seal explained that Kelly was one of the last bush-rangers, descended from convicts who had escaped into the Outback and who held a grudge against the colonial authorities, not least because of the way that land was distributed among the first settlers. At the time that Kelly’s gang was robbing and killing in Victoria, Australia was becoming a more urban society and myths about rural living became established and then grew. The character Ned Kelly benefits from this to this day and from the surviving dislike of authority displayed by Australians.
Further Links and references:
Ned Kelly: A Short Life., Ian Jones
The Kelly Outbreak: The Geographical Dimensions of Social banditry, John McQuilton.
Tell ‘em I Died Game: The Legend of Ned Kelly, Graham Seal.
Listener Ronald Land’s ancestor J. Sadleir published Recollections of a Victorian Police Officer , Melbourne, 1913.
Second World War Defences
A listener living in Hertfordshire has found evidence of a Home Guard motor emplacement close to Hertford North station. Making History invited Nick Hewitt of the Imperial War Museum to take a look and he explained that this was part of a network of defences hurriedly built at the fall of France in May 1940 when the British realised that the Second World War wouldn’t be fought solely in Europe.
Nick Hewitt explained that pillboxes and tank traps were thrown up throughout Britain, particularly near ports and parts of the coast where an enemy landing was thought possible. The highest concentration was along the East Coast, East Anglia and the South East and there were three defensive circles around London. The Hertford gun emplacement was part of the line of defence called ‘Line A’
Pillboxes UK- Devoted to British pillboxes and with plenty of photographs and useful links.
Pillboxes of Britain and Ireland by Mike Osbourne.
1958 in Tiger Bay
1958 was the year in which racial tensions erupted in Notting Hill. But, what happened in older black communities such as Tiger Bay in Cardiff? Making History consulted Glen Jordan at the University of Glamorgan who is also the founder of the Butetown History and Arts Centre.
Tiger Bay had a very different history to Notting Hill. It was founded as an immigrant community serving Cardiff docks and over time single sailors married local girls creating what might be described as an indigenous mixed-race community. There were riots, particularly in 1919 when servicemen returned from the First World War to find that jobs and, occasionally, loved ones were gone. Notting Hill was the location where entire families settled and so integration was considerably more difficult particularly in the few years after Windrush.
"The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and he spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice ..."
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol 1843.
Two listeners ask whether the character Scrooge was based on someone that once lived close to them.
Making History consulted Florian Schweizer at the Dickens Museum in London and he explained that although Dickens did indeed base his characters on real people, Scrooge wasn’t one of them. It seems that he is an amalgam of characters and grew in Dickens’ imagination after he read a government report on child poverty. The book was written in two months between October and December 1843 and published just a few days before Christmas that year.
Vanessa has presented science and current affairs programmes for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for BBC Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.
Contact Making History
Send your comments and questions for future programmes to: Making History BBC Radio 4 PO Box 3096 Brighton BN1 1PL
Vanessa has presented science and current affairs programmes for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for BBC Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald. 