Victoria’s Madmen: Revolution and Alienation

320 Pages·2013·2.23 MB·English

by  Clive Bloom (auth.)

Also by Clive Bloom (all published by Palgrave Macmillan)
RIOT CITY: Protest and Rebellion in the Capital (2012)
VIOLENT LONDON: 2000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts (2010)
BESTSELLERS: Popular Fiction Since 1900 (2008)
GOTHIC HORROR: A Guide for Students and Readers (2007)
CULT FICTION: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory (1996)
V i c t o r i a ’ s
M a d m e n
R e v o l u t i o n a n d
A l i e n a t i o n
C l i v e B l o o m
© Clive Bloom 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-0-230-31382-8
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identifi ed as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-33932-7 ISBN 978-1-137-31897-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-137-31897-8
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Frontispiece image: Queen Victoria, published in 1887 by
Charles Knight with the title ‘Her Majesty’s Gracious Smile’
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
To my family as yet unborn, makers of the future
This page intentionally left blank
C o n t e n t s
Acknowledgements viii
1 Manypeeplia Upsidownia 1
2 Radical Lunacy 13
3 The Shock of Vril 29
4 Massacre at Trafalgar 48
5 Sherlock Holmes and the Fairies 56
6 Knocking on Heaven’s Door 68
7 Tinker Bell on Mars 86
8 Chatterton’s Scorcher 103
9 The Death Machine of Hartman the Anarchist 120
10 Russia on the Clyde 136
11 Smoked Salmon and Onions 148
12 Imagined Worlds Made Real 160
13 Playing Cricket in the Corridors 171
14 The Collective Dreams of Bees 181
15 The Way of the Ego 194
16 Vegetarian Revolutionaries 219
17 On the Frontier 233
18 The Lifting of the Fog 246
19 The Crusade 257
20 The Sound of Distant Drums 278
Bibliography 290
Index 295
vii
A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
T
hanks are due to the following: Paul Ford at the Walsall Local
History Centre and Jennifer Thompson at Walsall Central
Library and Museum; Barrie N. Roberts, local historian, Walsall;
the archivists at the Greenwich Local History Museum; Nancy Langfeldt
and the librarians at the Bishopsgate Institute; Jo Parker, Tim Foster and
Gary Heals at the Vestry House Museum, Walthamstow; Robert Thwaite
and Renata Pillay, Bruce Castle Museum, Haringey Council; Colin Gale
of the Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum Service; Catherine
Coulthard at the City of London Police; Alice Tyrell at Notre Dame
University; Nick Hamilton at Resonance FM; Malcolm Hopkins and
William Hudson at Housmans Bookshop; Clive Bettington; Donald
Rumbelow; Philip Ruff and Helen Rappaport, who worked on the Siege
of Sidney Street exhibition at the Museum of London in Docklands
with me; and finally, Michael Strang, Ruth Ireland, Jon Lloyd, Jennifer
McCall and Clare Mence, who ‘encouraged’ the last push.
The portrait of Queen Victoria (frontispiece) is reproduced by kind
permission of the GL Archive/Alamy.
Information on the revolutionary movements described in Chapter 9
was first published in a greatly shortened form in the Jewish East End
Society’s special Siege of Sidney Street edition (23 November 2010). My
thanks to Clive Bettington for permission to reprint. The description of
the actual siege of Sidney Street in Chapter 19 first appeared in the BBC
History Magazine (2011). My thanks to the editor David Musgrove for
permission to reprint the article here. The story of William Courtney
in Chapter 6 first appeared in Riotous Revolutionaries: A History of
Britain’s Fight for a Republic (2007). My thanks to the History Press
for permission to reprint the section in a new context. The section on
socialist churches and Arthur Conan Doyle in Chapter 5 and thereafter
first appeared in a greatly abridged version as ‘The Legacy of Sherlock
viii
acknowledgements ix
Holmes’ in Catherine Wynne and Sabine Varnacker (eds), Sherlock
Holmes and Conan Doyle: Multi-Media Afterlives (Palgrave Macmillan,
2012). Some small sections of Chapters 3, 4 and 5 first appeared as
‘Angels in the Architecture’ in Peter Buse and Andrew Stott (eds), Ghosts:
Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History (Palgrave, 1999), whilst the
opening few paragraphs of Chapter 15 first appeared in Gothic Histories
(Continuum, 2009).