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Blood and plunder: the looted African gold – and the fight to get it back
It’s a tale of slavery, racism and naked imperial power. Barnaby Phillips traces the fate of the exquisite golden treasures looted by British forces from the kingdom of Asante 150 years ago
In a poorly lit cabinet in the Oriental Armoury of London’s Wallace Collection, there is a near-life size gold cast head, weighing nearly 1.5kg. It is perhaps the largest gold object to have come from Africa outside of ancient Egypt. When this head arrived in England in 1874, part of the haul of treasure brought back by Sir Garnet Wolseley’s army from the kingdom of Asante in west Africa, it attracted widespread comment, not all favourable. The Times said: it “seems to represent the head of a victim gagged for sacrifice”, and pronounced it “ghastly”. The Illustrated London News said it was “hideous and horrible”. But Richard Wallace, the wealthy aristocrat whose collection was later bequeathed to the nation, may have disagreed, because he paid £500 for it (about £62,000 today). In 1974, William Fagg, a curator at the British Museum, said the ‘Wallace Head’ was “a masterpiece… a technically excellent piece of lost-wax craftsmanship” that impacted like “a bomb” on the complacent artistic sensibilities of Victorian London. What was the African civilisation that had produced this golden head? And how did it, and other Asante pieces, end up in British museums and private collections? The Asante kingdom traces its origins to the late 17th century, when smaller kingdoms inland in the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) amalgamated under the control of a ruler based in the emerging city of Kumasi. Europeans were familiar with the Gold Coast, having traded there for gold, as the name suggests, but also enslaved people, ever since the 15th century. In the 18th century, Asante profited handsomely through both these trades, typically selling gold and human captives through Fante middlemen to the British, Portuguese, Dutch and other Europeans in their castles on the coast. But it wasn’t until 1817 that a British delegation travelled some 125 miles inland to Kumasi, and paid its respects to the Asante king, known as the Asantehene. One of the envoys, a young man from Bristol called Thomas Bowdich, wrote that Kumasi was a wealthy city with elegant architecture and sophisticated public hygiene. The Asantehene and his courtiers, he wrote, wore “massy gold ornaments, which glistened in every direction”. Bowdich’s descriptions caused incredulity and excitement in Britain. But his delegation failed to build a lasting friendship with Asante. By the early 19th century, Britain, hitherto an enthusiastic slave trading nation, had embraced abolitionism. The Asantehene, Osei Bonsu, worried about this threat to his wealth, and asked Bowdich whether the British king could “renew the slave trade, which will be good for me”. Over the following 50 years, as Britain tightened its control of the Gold Coast at the expense of European rivals, and as Asante maintained supremacy of the interior, there were sporadic tensions – notably in 1824 when a British invasion of Asante ended in defeat and the death and decapitation of the commanding officer, Sir Charles MacCarthy – but also decades of uneasy Anglo-Asante coexistence. This all changed in 1871, when Britain purchased Elmina, the largest trading castle on the coast, from the Dutch, despite Asante insistence it belonged to them. In January 1873, an Asante army swept south and invaded the British coastal protectorate, to the surprise of William Gladstone’s government in London. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/2XKCKN2webready-5e7ae12-e1776944134163.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A historical battle illustration showing red‑coated soldiers with muskets and bayonets clashing with fighters armed with spears and varied weapons. Smoke fills the background." title="A lithograph shows British troops clashing with Asante fighters during the first Anglo-Asante War (1823–31). As Britain expanded its presence in the Gold Coast, tensions between the two powers escalated (Image by Alamy)" /> In May 1873, Earl Kimberley, the colonial secretary, said that any attempt to conquer Asante would be “mad”. But the ambitious officer appointed to lead the British response, Sir Garnet Wolseley, had other ideas. Wolseley, just 40 but already a veteran of wars in Burma, Crimea, India, China and Canada, was determined the British would march to Kumasi. If the Asantehene, Kofi Karikari, would not make peace, he would “destroy his palaces, burn his capital, and lay waste his country as well as I could”. While politicians prevaricated, Wolseley shaped events on the ground. By January 1874, he was leading three battalions of British soldiers, plus many African allies and carriers, into the Asante forest. Read more | Politics and the Bayeux Tapestry: the inside story of the blockbuster loan to the British Museum The Asante army – armed with muskets – fought bravely, but was outgunned by the British, equipped with new Snider rifles. At the battle of Amoafo, many hundreds or even thousands of Asante soldiers, but only four British, were killed. One British sailor wrote that it was “murder, not a fair fight”. On 4 February, the British entered Kumasi, only to find that Karikari had fled. Wolseley, concerned about disease and encroaching rains, decided not to linger. Instead, he would leave the Asante with “a wholesome fear of the British power”. He ordered his soldiers to take treasure from the unguarded palace, and then blow it up, and to set fire to Kumasi to ensure “its total destruction”. Then he abandoned the burning city. Wolseley wrote that Karikari was “a brutal and deceitful monarch”. The British sense of racial superiority – Wolseley wrote that black people were suited only for slavery – had been reinforced by the apparent discovery in Kumasi of evidence of mass human sacrifice by the Asante. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1501979475webready-c12bcea-e1776944602447.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A central figure dressed in richly patterned regalia sits surrounded by attendants in traditional clothing. Large decorative umbrellas shade the group, with crowds and palm trees visible in the background." title="On the centenary of Sir Garnet Wolseley’s expedition, the then Asantehene, Opoku Ware II (seen here in 1977), requested the return of the Asante regalia, but it would take 50 more years for just 32 objects to come back to Ghana (Image by Getty Images)" /> Gold is always pretty On 13 February, the Asantehene’s envoys caught up with Wolseley on his march back to the coast, and agreed to a humiliating surrender. They handed over 1,000 ounces of gold objects, a tiny fraction of the 50,000-ounce “indemnity” demanded by Wolseley, but which included a significant part of the Asantehene’s regalia, essential to his political and spiritual authority. A history of Asante, written by one of Karikari’s successors, laments that the British were so impatient “that it was not even possible to call any of the provincial chiefs into Kumasi to contribute what they could. So King Kofi Karikari was obliged to bear the brunt of this payment alone.” Wolseley, who had already witnessed notorious plunders by British soldiers of palaces in India and China, drew a distinction between disorganised looting, which undermined military discipline and was therefore undesirable, and the acceptable collection of ‘prize’, to be auctioned off with the income shared among the troops. In accordance with this philosophy, when the British reached their headquarters at Cape Coast they held an auction of treasure from the Asantehene’s palace. The Daily Telegraph wrote: “The long centre table was covered as thickly as it could bear with jewellery and gold. The prize agent… had shown considerable taste in the arrangements of their stores… and gold is always pretty.” The auction was enthusiastically attended by many of the Cape Coast elite, delighted by the defeat of the feared Asante. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/531631001webready-71902b9-e1776944785361.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A gold sheath decorated with embossed concentric circles, leaf‑like motifs, and dotted borders" title="The British Museum houses some 550 Asante objects taken during the Anglo-Asante Wars, including the golden knife-sheath above (Image by The British Museum)" /> Many of the most valuable items, however, were sold in London in the spring of 1874 at Garrard, the crown jewellers in the West End, which had paid £11,000 (about £1.4m today) for the collection. Wolseley returned to Britain a hero – cheered by crowds, feted by Queen Victoria and the new prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, parodied on stage as ‘The Very Model of a Modern Major General’ – and so the sale of “the golden spoil from Ashantee” attracted considerable excitement. Queen Victoria took some pieces of treasure – presented to her by the soldiers – and this added to its prestige. For most of the aristocrats and others who crowded Garrard’s rooms, Asante objects were exotic souvenirs of a British victory, “treasured… as memorials of the recent struggle”, as The Times put it. William Cecil, the Marquess of Exeter, for example, bought two gold badges and mounted them on gilt-silver trays with his family crest and an inscription. In this way, what had been sacred objects in Asante – the badges, known as akrafokonmu, were worn by officials responsible for the purification of the Asantehene’s soul – became trophies. (One of Cecil’s mounted badges was bought by the British Museum in the 1970s, after passing through various wealthy owners). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/1010657001webready-ce6a8d3-e1776943998684.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A round gold ornament featuring a central raised dome, concentric beaded circles, and four smaller domes set within decorative motifs." title="This 19th-century gold akrafokonmu is now in the British Museum. In Asante, such items were sacred objects worn by officials responsible for the purification of the Asantehene’s soul (Image by The British Museum)" /> Hints of humility Amid the general triumphalism, there were some doubts. The Welsh nonconformist MP Henry Richard observed that “scarcely any Englishman could look back with pride” on what happened in Asante and other recent campaigns in Asia and Africa. “Those were not triumphs of Christian civilisation but of barbarism and brute force.” Newspaper reviews of the Garrard sale also contain hints of humility. Asante, and Africa more generally, was perceived in Britain as a place without culture. And yet, The Times wrote, the gold badges were “wonderful… it would be difficult for any skilled goldsmith in western Europe not so much to surpass, but even to equal them”. Read more | The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation Inevitably, Britain’s museums took an interest. It was the South Kensington Museum (today the V&A) that reacted first. The keeper of its Art Library, Robert Soden Smith, recognised Asante goldwork as “the most striking illustration… of the art of an ancient race hitherto imperfectly known to us”, and bought an elegant gold pipe, several badges and pieces of decorated sheet gold. The British Museum curator, Augustus Wollaston Franks, bought 10 objects initially, but grumbled that “some of the more dramatic specimens have been secured by private individuals”. He was probably thinking of Richard Wallace, who bought not only the gold head but also 15 other Asante objects, including swords and a pair of cast eagles, for a total of £1,256 (about £155,000 today), making him the largest purchaser. His biographer Suzanne Higgott says that Wallace craved recognition, and the Asante objects, “exceptional, high status and intriguingly ‘Oriental’”, therefore had obvious appeal. All of Wallace’s Asante purchases are still in the Wallace Collection today. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/BMImages01077757001SuperReswebready-408fd12-e1776944349408.jpeg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A curved sword with a dark blade featuring triangular and circular cutouts. The gold‑coloured handle is engraved and covered with two rounded pieces of spotted animal fur." title="This Asante ceremonial sword was one of 32 pieces returned to Ghana – on a long-term loan – in 2024 (Image by The British Museum)" /> The British Museum was able to enlarge its collection of Asante gold regalia over subsequent decades. This was in part because the British government gradually released more pieces which had been taken by Wolseley’s soldiers, but also because in 1896 another British army ransacked the rebuilt palace in Kumasi, and again carried off as much treasure as it could find. Today the British Museum has about 550 objects taken in the Anglo-Asante wars, of which some 220 are made of gold. Some of the most important pieces of Asante loot, however, remain in private hands or are otherwise hidden from public view. The Royal Artillery officer’s mess, in Larkhill near Salisbury, has an exquisite golden ram’s-head mask – 19cm in width and weighing 1.2kg – which William Fagg described as “a marvel of ethereal eggshell thin-lightness…among the most striking examples of west African metallurgy”. It was taken from the Asantehene’s palace by officers who were close to Sir Garnet Wolseley. Rather than being auctioned off, he allowed them to buy it directly for £135 (about £17,000 today). When the officers returned to England, newspapers reported they had “the best trophy… very valuable”. In 1875, the Royal Artillery sealed the ram’s head in a glass dome and mounted it on a stand which is carried on the backs of three bowed African figures, dressed in loincloths. Once again, Asante regalia was transformed into a British military souvenir. Today the ram’s head is only accessible to officers and their invited guests. The Royal Artillery declined my requests to see it. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/7770417-2webready-ea8e369-e1776944451359.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A group of people dressed in brightly patterned kente cloth stand outdoors, some holding ornate staffs and one playing a drum. Large colourful umbrellas shade several members of the group." title="People celebrate the Gold Coast becoming the independent nation of Ghana, Accra, 6 March 1957. Nearly seven decades after the formation of this new nation, says Barnaby Phillips,“the Asante people still revere their king and retain a strong attachment to their traditions” (Image by Topfoto)" /> Decades of campaigning The Asante people still refer to the 1874 war as ‘the Sagrenti War’, from the local pronunciation of ‘Sir Garnet’. It was a seminal moment in their kingdom’s decline. By the 1880s, according to their own histories, “Kumasi was losing its power and… falling into a ruinous state”. In 1901 the British formally annexed Asante territory. They sent the then Asantehene, Agyeman Prempeh, into exile on the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, where he spent more than two decades. Read more | Who should decide the stories museums tell? In 1957 the Gold Coast became the independent nation of Ghana, but the Asante people still revere their king and retain a strong attachment to their traditions. They have campaigned for decades for the return of the regalia. In 1974 the Asantehene, Opoku Ware II, wrote that the centenary of Wolseley’s expedition marked an “auspicious occasion on which to press for the return of objects of the deepest significance” to the Asante. This set off a flurry of diplomacy. Some British diplomats argued in favour of returning regalia, and the British Museum’s director, John Pope-Hennessey, told his trustees “there is widely conceded to be some moral weight behind the Asantehene’s request”. But the negotiations floundered, in part because even British officials who favoured flexibility could see no way round the 1963 British Museum Act, which makes it almost impossible for that institution to permanently return, or ‘deaccession’, items in its collection. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1252637177webready-448d938-e1776943890314.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Three people pose in an ornate room with gold columns and decorative furnishings. The person in the centre wears a blue suit, while the two on either side wear brightly coloured kente cloth garments." title="In 2023, the Asantehene, Osei Tutu II, and his wife Julia met with King Charles III as they continued to press for the return of the Asante regalia (Image by Getty Images)" /> In 2023 the current Asantehene, Osei Tutu II, raised the matter again, when he visited London to attend the coronation of his friend, Charles III. This time, his appeal fell on fertile ground. Museums in the west were under pressure to address the legacies of the colonial period and, in particular, to return objects taken by force. In 2024 the British Museum and the V&A (also constrained by national legislation from making permanent returns) announced they would return on long-term loan (for probably six or nine years) 32 pieces of Asante regalia. The Fowler Museum in Los Angeles announced that it was permanently returning seven objects looted by Wolseley’s army. In response to these developments, Ivor Agyeman-Duah, the director of the Asantehene’s museum in Kumasi, said: “We want to get back as many objects as is humanly possible… We just want people to see what our civilisation was, and how it can inspire the present.” How many treasures the Asante people do get back – and for how long they get to keep them – is bound to remain the subject of intense debate for years. “What we have here embodies the soul of Asante” The return of 32 pieces of gold regalia in 2024 sparked joy – and anger – among the Asante people, writes Barnaby Phillips On 1 May 2024, I waited in the sweltering heat outside the Manhyia Palace Museum, in Kumasi, Ghana, alongside local chiefs, foreign diplomats and museum officials. The banners on the museum’s walls proclaimed: “Homecoming; Adversity and Commemoration”. This was the ceremony to mark the return of 32 pieces of Asante gold regalia – among them, sacred badges, a helmet, a ceremonial sword and bracelets – that had been looted by British soldiers in 1874 and 1896. The Asantehene, Osei Tutu II, dressed in green robes and a golden headdress, arrived to the shouts of praise singers and the beating of drums, protected from the sun by a huge tasselled umbrella carried by his entourage. The director of the V&A, Tristram Hunt, bowed low before the Asantehene and addressed the crowd: “We acknowledge the very painful history surrounding the acquisition of these objects, a history tainted by the scars of imperial conquest and colonialism.” It would have been difficult to imagine the director of a major British museum using these words anywhere, let alone in this context, just a few years ago. The Asantehene, for his part, said the British had returned a small part of what they had taken. “But what we have here embodies the soul of Asante. Today is a happy day for Asante, for the black African continent.” People cheered and filed excitedly into the museum, where they admired the glittering gold treasure, beautifully displayed on green cloth in glass display cases. Not everybody in Ghana felt so positive. Many were upset that the British were only returning objects on loan. Nii Kwate Owoo, a Ghanaian filmmaker who attended the ‘Homecoming’ ceremony, told me: “It turns my stomach, to be quite frank. An armed robber comes into your house, mows down your family and grabs your valuables, and comes back later and says: ‘Okay, you’re making noises, I’ll give this back as a loan!’” Inside the museum, I encountered more nuanced reactions. A museum guide, Sammy Amoah, said the return of the regalia was “important because it confirms history. That what we’ve been taught in books about our own past is true.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-1988198434webready-1a0a230-e1776945236127.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A group of people stand closely together as a person in a leopard‑print headdress and ceremonial staff receives a white box from someone leaning forward. Others in traditional attire look on." title="Osei Tutu II receives artefacts returned by the Fowler Museum in February 2024. Three months later, the British Museum and the V&A returned 32 objects, on loan (Image by Getty Images)" /> Barnaby Phillips is a historian and conservationist. His new book, The African Kingdom of Gold: Britain and the Asante Treasure, was published by Oneworld in March This article was first published in the April 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
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The past has no shortage of disastrous kings, queens, and other rulers; such a list could easily have been filled with the worst Roman emperors alone. Some have been homicidal, like Nero or Genghis Khan; simply incompetent, like Edward II; completely untrustworthy, like Charles I; or amiable but inadequate, like Louis XVI of France. But who are truly the worst, and why? Jonny Wilkes makes the case against 16 rulers from history… <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-520718487-44a3fc9-e1776420577392.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A medieval battle scene shows armoured soldiers fighting with spears and shields, while two mounted knights dominate the centre and right. The figures wear ornate gold-and-black armour, and richly decorated horses move through the fray. Stone buildings and a towered structure rise in the background." title="King Tarquin and his family were expelled from Rome in 509 BC, paving the way for the creation of the Roman Republic (Image by Getty Images)" /> 1. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus King of Rome, 534–509 BC Before Rome had emperors, it had a line of kings going back to the city’s mythical founder, Romulus. The last, however, presided over a reign of terror so bad that the people gave up on the monarchy altogether, heralding the dawn of the Republic. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (commonly known as ‘Tarquin the Proud’) had seized the throne by planning the assassination of his own father-in-law, then once in power he killed senators on a whim and imprisoned or executed anyone suspected of disloyalty. His undoing came when his son raped a noblewoman, which caused such outrage that a revolt broke out that saw the tyrannical king overthrown and exiled. 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A grassy landscape with tents and figures appears behind them." title="A fanciful illustration depicts King John signing the Magna Carta at Runnymede. In reality, the charter was authenticated with his royal seal (Image by Getty Images)" /> 3. John King of England, 1199–1216 Seriously, how could the arch-villain of Robin Hood not make an appearance? Beyond the tale of the fabled outlaw, John severely damaged the authority of the English monarchy. As a prince, he angered the nobles of Ireland and attempted to steal his brother Richard I’s crown, only ending up as king after Richard died without a legitimate heir. Notably, he also managed to outmanoeuvre a rival claim from his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, whom he is later believed to have had murdered. Within a few years in power, John had lost Normandy – the foundation of his family’s Angevin empire on the continent – then he emptied the kingdom’s coffers trying to win it back. 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Smoke or swirling shapes fill the space, and broken pottery pieces lie near the throne, adding to the sense of disruption." title="An illustration depicts Emperor Aizong on his throne during the Mongol siege of Caizhou. The ruler’s death led to his general, Wanyan Chenglin, taking power – albeit very briefly (Image by Getty Images)" /> 4. Wanyan Chenglin Emperor of the Jin dynasty, 1234 On 9 February 1234, with the warriors of the Mongol empire besieging the city of Caizhou, the emperor of the Jin dynasty in China, Aizong, knew that his 10-year reign would be over shortly. That said, he did not want to be the last in his line, so he abdicated and passed the throne to his general, Wanyan Chenglin, before taking his own life. The reluctant new emperor began a reign that would be doomed to last just a matter of hours. He was killed leading his soldiers in a last stand when the Mongols broke through the city walls. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/12Charles-the-BadGettyImages-587495540-00b7ee7-e1776421241476.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A medieval manuscript illustration shows a crowned figure in red robes seated inside a small architectural chamber, gesturing toward several figures in long white robes standing outside. The scene is set against a patterned gold and red background with a decorative border" title="Charles II of Navarre harangues a crowd of angry Parisians. The monarch’s abysmal leadership earned him the name ‘Charles the Bad’ (Image by Getty Images)" /> 5. Charles the Bad King of Navarre, 1349–87 The name gives away why he belongs on this list, doesn’t it? Charles earned ‘the Bad’ for his duplicitous and treacherous behaviour in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Although King of Navarre in Spain, he owned a lot of land in northern France, which put him in the middle of the conflict, and his response was to keep flipping sides. Driven solely by ambition, he believed he should be on the French throne, and he plotted and murdered to get it. All the while, Navarre went ignored. What made him truly bad, though, was that his schemes failed utterly. Charles is perhaps best-known today for his grisly end in 1387, when the brandy-soaked sheets he had been wrapped in to cure an illness accidentally caught fire, burning him alive. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/13GettyImages-973900956-e2098c3-e1776421323481.jpg" width="1496" height="1000" alt="A painted portrait shows a person wearing a dark garment with a white collar and a gold chain decorated with jewels and a cross‑shaped pendant. They wear a dark cap, set against a reddish background." title="Henry VI’s disastrous rule led to the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses, during which he lost his throne twice (Image by Getty Images)" /> 6. Henry VI King of England, 1422–61, 1470-71 Ascending the throne of England as an infant and the son of the hero of Agincourt, the young Henry VI was always going to struggle to live up to his dynastic legacy. Not helped by his total lack of leadership, it went even worse than feared: he lost control of France (won by his father Henry V), suffered a mental breakdown, and saw his kingdom plunge into the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian cause would be headed not by the king, but his queen, Margaret. Henry’s role amounted to being kicked off the throne by the Yorkist Edward IV, then placed back on it by the ‘kingmaker’, the Earl of Warwick, and finally losing it again after being captured. Read more | The power behind the throne: women in the Wars of the Roses <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/6-Christian-II-GettyImages-1474551628-a0ec6c8-e1776421427762.jpg" width="1497" height="1000" alt="A rustic stone-walled room is lit softly as an older person with grey hair stands behind a carved wooden chair. Another figure in dark Renaissance-style clothing with puffed sleeves and a hat leans on a round table set with a pewter jug, a cup, and a plate holding a small piece of food. A large ceramic jug rests on the floor, and behind them is a bed draped in red and white fabric with shelves holding household objects." title="Christian II spent the last 27 years of his life under lock and key, as shown in this 1871 painting by Carl Bloch (Image by Getty Images)" /> 7. Christian II King of Denmark and Norway, 1513–23 Christian’s reign may seem more insignificant than terrible at first glance, but it signalled the end of the Kalmar Union, which had bound together the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden for well over a century. Having been crowned in the first two of those countries in 1513, he set out to secure the third. It would not be until 1520 that he captured Stockholm, although, hardly magnanimous in victory, his immediate action was to execute 82 nobles. The so-called Stockholm Bloodbath fuelled a Swedish rebellion against Christian and weakened his authority back in Denmark and Norway. He was overthrown and exiled, and then when he launched a desperate bid to win back his thrones by force, he was imprisoned for the rest of his life. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/3Ivan-the-TerribleGettyImages-2182465325-461b373-e1776421509731.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A painted portrait shows a ruler wearing richly decorated robes and a tall, jeweled crown, holding a golden scepter in one hand and an orb topped with a cross in the other. The background is dark, highlighting the elaborate attire." title="No one was safe from Ivan the Terrible – he is even said to have murdered his own son in a fit of rage (Image by Getty Images)" /> 8. Ivan the Terrible Tsar of Russia, 1547–84 As the first tsar, Ivan was in some ways an able ruler since he laid the foundations of the Russian empire. He became known as ‘the Terrible’ for a reason, though. Having hated the nobles from an early age (at 13, he had one fed to a pack of dogs), he wasted no time in purging the upper classes. The domain he inherited clearly was not enough: he instigated numerous, and disastrous, wars of expansion, and even established his own fiefdom within his land where, essentially, anything went. With Ivan prone to paranoia and fits of rages, no one was safe: he ordered a full-on attack on one of his own cities, Novgorod, and beat his daughter-in-law into having a miscarriage, then murdered his son. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/9Rudolf-IIGettyImages-905611540-b04ce2b-e1776421580535.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A formal portrait shows a man in dark, gold‑detailed armour with a white ruffled collar, holding a baton and resting his other hand on a decorated sword. He stands beside a red‑covered table with a feathered hat, against a backdrop of patterned gold‑and‑red drapery." title="Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II depicted c1580. Critics of Rudolf’s rule claim that he spent more time dabbling in the arts than governing his vast domain (Image by Getty Images)" /> 9. Rudolf II Holy Roman Emperor, 1576–1612 Despite being hailed as a generous patron of the arts and sciences, Habsburg emperor Rudolf II utterly failed in his role as the leader of one of Europe’s major powers. Rather than focusing on politics and administration, he instead shut himself away to focus on personal pursuits like alchemy. When he did show some determination – starting a war with the Ottoman empire to unify Christendom – it proved a disaster. His subjects in Hungary revolted and his family made him hand over power to his younger brother. Rudolf’s most damning legacy, however, was that his miserable tenure as emperor has been blamed as one of the causes of the Thirty Years’ War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in history. Read more | What was the Habsburg jaw? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/8-LouisXVGettyImages-587493726-ce25b64-e1776421720614.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A formal portrait shows a man in a blue velvet coat with gold embroidery, a white waistcoat, lace cuffs, and a blue sash decorated with medals. He stands before red drapery with a cloudy sky in the background." title="King Louis XV ruled France for nearly 59 years – but his time on the throne was marred by countless failures (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. Louis XV King of France, 1715–74 It could certainly be argued that Louis XV’s status as a poor king of France was overshadowed by his successor, Louis XVI, since he was the one who lost his head in the French Revolution. Yet Louis XV’s reign sowed the seeds of the people’s discontent that would lead to such a violent rejection of the monarchy. In short, he was a deeply ineffectual ruler, let alone the all-powerful absolutist king that France had become accustomed to under Louis XIV. Reports of corruption and handing over influence to his mistresses hurt the crown’s authority, while his wars and extravagant spending depleted the coffers. France became a less powerful nation under his rule, and smaller too: he gave up New France in the Americas after the disastrous Seven Years’ War. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/5Ferdinand-VIIGettyImages-1288509729-08b1863-e1776421796923.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A detailed 19th‑century ceremonial scene depicts royals and high‑ranking officials in elaborate uniforms and gowns assembled by a waterfront. Boats and sailors fill the foreground, while clergy, soldiers, and attendants stand nearby. A grand architectural building rises in the background." title="A painting shows Ferdinand VII greeting the French Duke of Angoulême, whose 1823 invasion of Spain – ordered by fellow Bourbon Louis XVIII – restored Ferdinand’s absolutist authority after three years of constitutional rule (Image by Getty Images)" /> 11. Ferdinand VII King of Spain, 1808, 1813–33 Shortly after taking the throne in 1808, Ferdinand handed over his kingdom – and himself – to Napoleon Bonaparte. Six years of captivity in France later, he returned with a need to prove his absolutist credentials and so ditched Spain’s liberal constitution that had been written in his absence. This led to multiple uprisings, notably the revolt of 1820, which ushered in three years during which the king was forced to accept a constitutional regime. While more selfish than monstrous, Ferdinand’s legacy and place on this list were confirmed by two things: he oversaw the loss of nearly all of Spain’s colonial territories in the Americas and, following his death, his petty bid to exclude his brother from the succession resulted in a long civil war. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/11Ranavalona-IGettyImages-1414087523-76615ce-e1776421903297.jpg" width="1496" height="1000" alt="A portrait shows a person in a long pink gown with ruffled trim and a red, gold‑edged cape, standing outdoors with a jeweled crown on their head. They hold a white handkerchief, with trees and distant hills behind them." title="It is said that Queen Ranavalona wanted to create a pair of giant scissors to cut her enemies in half (Image by Getty Images)" /> 12. Ranavalona I Queen of Imerina, 1828–61 To try and hold back the wave of European colonisation in Africa, Queen Ranavalona I, of modern-day Madagascar, would go to any lengths. She wanted to purge all foreign influence, expelling missionaries, persecuting Christians and restricting trade. She even tried to have a giant pair of scissors made so that she could literally chop foreigners in half. The ones who suffered the most, however, were her people: to preserve her land’s self-sufficiency and way of life, as she saw it, Ranavalona used forced labour for her royal projects and fear to maintain order. Many executions took the form of the tangena ordeal, a witch-hunt-style trial where the accused was made to ingest poison and if they showed any adverse effects, they were deemed guilty. It is claimed that as much as 50 per cent of the population perished during her rule. Read more | “Africans have been starved of historical figures from their own lands that they can look up to”: Paula Akpan on female African leaders <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/10Leopold-IIGettyImages-1340093773-009a5d7-e1776421971106.jpg" width="1497" height="1000" alt="A political cartoon depicts a person trapped in the coils of a large red snake whose head is drawn as a crowned man. Another figure stands in the background near vegetation and a hut." title="A satirical cartoon from Punch magazine depicts King Leopold II as a snake, viciously attacking a Congolese rubber worker (Image by Getty Images)" /> 13. Leopold II King of the Belgians, 1865–1909 Leopold II may not have been a terrible king in Belgium itself, but with the Congo Free State, he revealed just how much of a monster he could be. In 1885, he created his own state in central Africa, having convinced European powers that he intended to improve the lives of the people living there. In reality, this privately owned kingdom allowed Leopold to exploit the Congolese people so that he could make money from its ivory and natural rubber reserves. Under his system of forced labour, any workers who failed to meet their quotas would be punished with mutilation. Leopold’s preferred method was chopping off hands and feet. Millions died from the brutality and rampant diseases. This was an age where European empires carved up and exploited the African continent, so the fact that international outrage finally forced Leopold to hand over the Congo Free State illustrates the appalling extent of the atrocities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/7Khalid-ibn-Barghash-fb0d656.jpg" width="551" height="775" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows a person seated on an ornate chair, wearing a turban, a long decorated robe, and sandals, with a curved dagger at the waist. A patterned carpet and cushioned bench appear behind them." title="The Anglo-Zanzibar War – which lasted for just 38 minutes – put Khalid ibn Barghash’s three-day rule to an end" /> 14. Khalid ibn Barghash Sultan of Zanzibar, 1896 Not only did Khalid ibn Barghash rule for just three days, but he was ousted in the shortest war in history. So, in truth, there is no knowing whether he would have been a bad ruler: there wasn’t enough time. In 1896, the sultan of Zanzibar died, which put the British in a tough position. They controlled the islands off the east African coast as it served as a strategic trade post for the Indian Ocean. Against British wishes, Khalid, who may well have killed his predecessor, assumed the role of sultan and fortified the palace with around 3,000 supporters. The British sent warships, though, and initiated a brief bombardment. The Anglo-Zanzibar War lasted around 38 minutes, and Khalid fled into exile. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/17Nicholas-IIGettyImages-542910549-cbbc229-e1776422122833.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A historical black‑and‑white photograph depicts two officers in peaked caps, boots, and decorated uniforms standing on a grassy field and speaking to one another. Behind them, other officers gather in small groups, and a horse‑drawn carriage or artillery piece sits near the tree line." title="Tsar Nicholas II (right) addresses a Russian officer during the First World War. The Romanov ruler was overthrown in 1917 and murdered alongside his family the following year (Image by Getty Images)" /> 15. Nicholas II Tsar of Russia, 1894–1917 The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia for more than 300 years – and it all ended during the reign of Nicholas II. Not suited to wielding autocratic power over a huge empire, he made a catalogue of errors and refused to adapt beyond his rigid belief that he had the divinely ordained right to rule. In 1905 alone, Russia lost a war with Japan and broke out in revolution, yet Nicholas only made cursory changes and tried to move on. His court became dominated by the strange and ambitious mystic, Rasputin, his nobles and politicians abandoned him, and his decision to take command of the armies in the First World War meant that he was held personally responsible for every defeat and death. Revolution erupted again in 1917, forcing his abdication. While imprisoned by the revolutionaries, Nicholas and his entire family were murdered. It was a bloody and definitive end to the tsars, as Russia became a communist regime. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/15Edward-VIIIGettyImages-514689872-8d0ca51-e1776422238781.jpg" width="1497" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph shows three people standing side by side outdoors: a man in a military uniform with insignia, a man in a long overcoat and tie, and a person in a dark coat and hat. A building with shuttered windows appear behind them." title="The Duke and Duchess of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson) pictured with Adolf Hitler, 1937. The couple’s meeting with the Führer proved highly controversial (Image by Getty Images)" /> 16. Edward VIII King of England, 1936 Edward became king on 20 January 1936, on the death of his father George V. Before the year was out, he had abdicated in disgrace. His brief reign had entirely been focused on his wish to marry an American named Wallis Simpson, but she had been divorced once and was seeking a second, making her wholly unacceptable to the royal family, the political establishment and the church. Yet his reputation as a bad monarch could have been even worse had he stayed: Edward has long been accused of being a Nazi sympathiser, who toured Hitler’s Germany almost two years before the Second World War.
At the end of the 19th century, the law-abiding citizens of Birmingham were terrorised by a new breed of gang member with two defining passions: natty streetwear and extreme violence. Andrew Davies reveals why so many young, working-class men were drawn to the brutal glamour of the peaky blinders
"Surely all respectable and law-abiding citizens are sick of the very name of ruffianism in Birmingham and assaults on police. No matter what part of the city one walks, gangs of 'peaky blinders' are to be seen, who ofttimes think nothing of grossly insulting passers by, be it a man, woman or child. I venture to say that 99 times out of 100, they are not even brought to justice." This anguished letter, signed "Workman", was published in the Birmingham Daily Mail on 21 July 1898. Who were Birmingham's real Peaky Blinders? ‘Peaky blinders’ were easily recognised. Contrary to the myth that grew in later decades – and the BBC drama series – they did not wear caps lined with razors. In fact, they wore ‘billycock’ or bowler-style hats, made of hard felt, with a rakish, curved rim, two-and-a-half inches wide. They moulded the brims of their hats into a point, worn tilted over one eye – hence their nickname. They did not belong to a single gang. Quite the reverse: opposing gangs, all sharing this outlandish style, sought each other out on the streets of Birmingham and in late-night confrontations outside the city’s music halls. The term peaky blinder, adopted in the 1890s, was distinctive to Birmingham. In Manchester and neighbouring Salford, gang members were known as ‘scuttlers’. In London, they became known by the more enduring label ‘hooligan’. How violent were real gangs like the Peaky Blinders? The frustration of ‘Workman’ was understandable. Three days earlier, Police Constable George Snipe had been fatally injured in a disturbance that shocked the city. PC Snipe and a fellow constable named Mead were patrolling a poor district to the north of the city centre between 9.30pm and 10pm when they ‘moved on’ a group of six or seven young ‘roughs’ who had gathered outside the Tram Stores pub in Hockley Hill. As one member of the group later admitted, the men had spent the day, a Sunday, on a spree, “drinking all the day, and fighting all the evening”. The constables followed the men to the junction of Bridge Street West, where PC Snipe arrested 23-year-old William Colerain for using vile language. When the two constables tried to take Colerain in, he kicked out and the prisoner’s friends attempted to rescue him. A crowd gathered. In the ensuing melee, someone hurled a brick at PC Snipe’s head with such force that it knocked his helmet off. The stricken constable was taken by cab to the city’s General Hospital, where he died in the early hours of the following morning. A post-mortem revealed that his skull had been fractured in two places. On the podcast | Historian Andrew Davies on the real Birmingham gangsters who inspired Peaky Blinders The death of PC Snipe caused an outcry. Editorial commentaries in the Birmingham press railed against the brutality, violence and degradation that confronted the city's magistrates on a daily basis. According to the Mail, "A large percentage of the rising generation are emerging from boyhood into manhood without acknowledging any authority whatever, and with all the instincts of the savage brute implanted in them." The Mail was not alone in demanding the introduction of flogging for crimes of violence. As it pointed out, a public meeting in St George's Ward, attended by a large number of working people – many of whom lived locally, close to the scene where PC Snipe had been assaulted – "enthusiastically applauded" calls for brutal street ruffians to be flogged. "Public feeling has reached a white heat," the Mail commented, "and very properly so." A local woman named Polly Mullins identified the brick-thrower as James Franklin. Aged 19, Franklin worked as a file-cutter. He stood trial at the Birmingham Assizes on 16 December 1897, but the case against him collapsed when defence witnesses testified that the brick had been thrown not by Franklin, but by 19-year-old George ‘Cloggy’ Williams. Franklin was found not guilty. Williams went on the run as soon as he heard that PC Snipe had died. He evaded arrest until 9 January 1898. When he made his first appearance before the city’s stipendiary magistrate, reporters noted that, “his hair, which is of a light colour, was dressed in the approved ‘peaky blinder’ style, short at the back, and pulled down in a fringe over his forehead”. His former employer testified that Williams had worked as a glass-beveller for four years before leaving abruptly, without drawing his wages, on the day of Snipe’s death. Contrary to the prevailing depiction of peaky blinders as workshy, the employer said Williams had been “very industrious”. Williams in turn stood trial at Birmingham Assizes on 17 March 1898. After just two days of hearings, he was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to penal servitude for life. Passing sentence, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Russell, described the crime as "atrocious", noting that it was "thinly removed" from murder. The judge evidently thought the jury had been unduly lenient in finding Williams guilty only of manslaughter. The local newspapers applauded the sentence. As the Birmingham Daily Post put it: "We hope that every rowdy in Birmingham will take the lesson to heart." If the term peaky blinder was new in the 1890s, concern at violence among youths in Birmingham’s industrial districts was not. As historian Barbara Weinberger notes, clashes between rival youth gangs were first reported in the city during the early 1870s, their origins in territorial wars fought between English and Irish street gangs. Hostility towards Birmingham’s Irish-Catholic population had intensified during the previous decade. In June 1867, Park Street in the city’s Irish quarter had been largely demolished during the Murphy riots, provoked by an anti-Catholic tirade by the militant Protestant orator William Murphy. Anti-Irish feeling was subsequently inflamed by reports of ‘Fenian’ activity. During the 1870s, according to Weinberger, anti-Irish sentiment “offered a focus and a target for the frustrations of inner city youths which… became institutionalised in gang warfare”. Why did people join gangs like the Peaky Blinders? Weinberger offers two further explanations for a reported upsurge in street disturbances and gang warfare in Birmingham from around 1873–74. The recession that followed the boom of the early 1870s threw thousands of unemployed and disenfranchised youths onto the streets. At the same time, police clampdowns on drunkenness and street gambling were resented in working-class districts. Young men featured prominently in the disturbances that ensued. Weinberger contrasted the vigour of campaigns to reform “public manners” with the indifference shown by the civic authorities to the “welfare or rights of a section of the community who had no power or votes… and for whose behaviour they had nothing but disdain”. Youthful members of Birmingham’s street gangs described themselves as ‘sloggers’. According to historian Philip Gooderson, the ethnic hostility that sparked gang conflict in the 1870s was later eclipsed by narrower, territorial loyalties. Most of the feuds reported in the press during the 1880s and 1890s involved gangs from adjacent districts. Conflicts spread across the Birmingham conurbation, extending from the central ‘slums’ to Aston, Perry Barr and Balsall Heath, all of which lay outside the jurisdiction of the Birmingham police in 1890. Street gangs also confronted each other at music halls. On 23 December 1893, John Metcalfe, aged 20, was fatally stabbed in the neck during a fight between rival gangs from Park Street and Barford Street. The gangs clashed outside ‘the Mucker’, the concert hall in Digbeth, fighting with the buckle ends of their belts as well as knives. Thomas Cherry, a 19-year-old nailmaker, was subsequently convicted of manslaughter. He was sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. By the 1890s, Birmingham’s sloggers had adopted a distinctive uniform. One of the witnesses at Cherry’s trial, William Bond, sported a “cropped head and bell-bottomed trousers”. It was a style shared by the sloggers’ counterparts in Manchester and London, the scuttler and the hooligan. What did the real Peaky Blinders wear? The Birmingham paint and varnish manufacturer Arthur Matthison saw the city’s warring youths at close quarters when his family moved to Summer Lane, close to the spot where PC Snipe was fatally injured and notorious as a rendezvous of the ‘peakies’. In his memoirs, Matthison painted the peaky blinder as intensely style-conscious: “He took pride in his personal appearance and dressed the part with skill. Bell-bottomed trousers secured by a buckle belt, hob-nailed boots, a jacket of sorts, a gaudy scarf and a billy-cock hat with a long elongated brim. This hat was worn well over one eye, hence the name ‘peaky blinder’. His hair was prison cropped all over his head, except for a quiff in front which was grown long and plastered down obliquely on his forehead.” Read more | In pictures: what did the real Peaky Blinders look like? As Matthison pointed out, most peakies belonged to a slogging gang. He saw these youths as “the product of poverty, squalor and slum environment”. To Matthison, living in Summer Lane with “slums abounding all around”, it was all too apparent that youth violence was the by-product of harsh social and economic conditions. Historian Philip Gooderson qualifies this assessment, pointing out that gang conflicts not only extended beyond the city’s slums but also drew in many youths in full-time work. The occupations of the sloggers who appeared in droves before the magistrates, according to Gooderson, read like “a roll-call” of Birmingham’s industrial workforce: “brass caster, iron caster, fender maker, striker, hinge maker, filer, stamper, chandelier maker, gun polisher, coach builder, spectacle maker, glass blower”. Half of them worked in the iron or the brass industries, the dominant sectors of the local economy. None of them, however, could be described as middle-class. Slogging, like scuttling in Manchester and Salford, was a working-class pastime, reflecting the kudos attached to displays of fighting prowess and toughness in working-class neighbourhoods. Middle-class youths, with greater opportunities and better prospects, had no incentive to risk injury and imprisonment. The Mail dispatched a reporter to Summer Lane, where Matthison lived in the early 1890s, and the correspondent relayed an encounter with a peakie's 'moll'. She too was easily identified by her appearance, since it mirrored those of the peaky blinder himself: "There was the same lavish display of pearl buttons, the well-developed fringe obscuring the whole of the forehead and descending nearly to her eyes, and the characteristic gaudy-coloured silk neckerchief covering her throat. Her head was hidden beneath an elaborate hat of considerable dimensions and decorated with feathers and poppies." (Interestingly, by the late 1890s, the peaky blinder's uniform incorporated the pearl buttons typically associated with the London costermonger.) The reporter concluded, ruefully, that Summer Lane's molls were a "long-suffering lot". When did the real Peaky Blinders disappear? In the years before the First World War, Birmingham’s peaky blinders faded from view. Gooderson attributes the decline of slogging gangs and the concomitant disappearance of the peakies to a number of factors, ranging from the growth of football as an alternative source of excitement for working-class youths to a belated clampdown by the police and judiciary. Like all youth fashions, peaky blinder style had a limited shelf-life. In the early decades of the 20th century, young people in Birmingham, as elsewhere across Britain, began to look to Hollywood for a new sense of glamour. Had a youth dressed as a peaky blinder made an appearance in Birmingham in the 1920s he would have been greeted with astonishment, although middle-aged passers-by might have chuckled in recognition. In 1936, nearly 40 years after their demise, memories of the peaky blinders were stirred by a series of letters published in the "Notes and Queries" column of the Birmingham Weekly Post. One reader had seen "many a policeman" and civilians alike "laid out" by them. In reply, "Bred and Born Brum" insisted that the peaky blinder was "just an ordinary working man… He could always be found at work during the day in some brass foundry, doing his bit at the lathe or vice or perhaps as a polisher or in the casting shop." Read more | Who were the real Billy Boys, the Glasgow gang in Peaky Blinders S5? Another correspondent, F Atkins, was adamant that “a good many readers have a wrong conception” of peaky blinders: “Their actions were mostly restrained to rival gangs and the police. The general public was seldom interfered with unless they interfered.” Mr Atkins also revealed how the hat that gave the peakie his name was fashioned. It was a “Bowler hat with the brim made to fit the sides, the front of the brim came to a point almost like the spout of a jug. This was done by wetting the brim, warming it by the fire, them making it the shape required. This was worn on the side of the head to show the hair on the other side done in a ‘quiff’.” The peaky blinders had long ceased to stalk Birmingham’s toughest streets. But their fashion sense and penchant for violence had guaranteed their spot in the second city’s collective memory. Andrew Davies is the author of City of Gangs: Glasgow and the Rise of the British Gangster (Hodder & Stoughton, 2013). He discussed the real peaky blinders on the HistoryExtra podcast This article was first published in the September 2019 edition of BBC History Magazine
Kathryn Hughes explores how Mrs Beeton's upbringing and early magazine work shaped her revolutionary editorial approach to recipes, household organisation and etiquette
Mrs Beeton is a name synonymous with 19th-century domesticity – most notably in connection with the iconic Book of Household Management. But who was the real woman behind the name? Emily Briffett is joined by author, historian and biographer Kathryn Hughes to uncover the life of Isabella Beeton, an industrious editorial innovator whose influence is still felt today.
Oh, Mary! makes a monster of Mary Todd Lincoln – but has history been too harsh?
Mary Todd Lincoln has been much maligned for her erratic behaviour ever since she stepped foot into the White House, and stage play Oh, Mary! leans into that, portraying her as a drunk, cabaret-obsessed drama queen. But the story of the real First Lady is one of enduring tragedy after tragedy
The legacy of US President Abraham Lincoln is beyond reproach: he emancipated the slaves and saved the Union in the American Civil War. That’s enough to enshrine him as one of the best to have ever served in the Oval Office. When it came to his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, however, the history books have been less kind. The First Lady is remembered as a tragic figure with a troubled mental state, which worsened throughout her life as she endured a series of devastating personal losses, including Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Prone to depression, headaches and tempers, she battled inner demons within and censure without. Her own son had her committed to an insane asylum. While that does not sound like a story filled with laughs, Mary Todd Lincoln has inspired the darkly comic and deeply silly stage play Oh, Mary!, currently playing on Broadway in New York City and in London’s West End. *Warning: spoilers for the stage play ahead * Leaving historical accuracy far behind, it gleefully reframes her as a miserable alcoholic longing to escape her closeted homosexual presidential husband and become a cabaret star. Who was the real Mary Todd Lincoln? Mary Todd Lincoln was the wife of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who served from 1861 to 1865. Following his assassination, she would live for another 17 years, although she was consumed by her grief and deteriorating mental health. Her sad end was the more poignant given that, in her youth, Mary had the makings for a successful role in the political landscape of Washington, DC, thanks to an upbringing that fostered her education, intelligence and social standing. Born on 13 December 1818, she was the fourth child of a wealthy and well-connected businessman, Robert Smith Todd, and Eliza Ann Parker Todd, daughter of a prominent family. Mary lost her mother at the age of six and her father quickly remarried. With a total of 16 children, there was little affection in the Todd household. Yet Mary received an excellent education: her hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, was known as the ‘Athens of the West’ as it had grown into an intellectual and cultural stronghold for progressive thought. She had six years of studies, followed by four more at an elite institution called Madame Mentelle’s School for Young Ladies, where she excelled in numerous subjects, especially French. Read more | Was Abraham Lincoln the greatest US president? How did Mary Todd meet Abraham Lincoln? In 1839, Mary moved to Springfield, Illinois, to live with her sister Elizabeth. As her sister’s husband was the son of a former governor of Illinois, Mary immediately became accustomed to socialising with politicians. One rising star of the Democratic Party, Stephen A Douglas, tried to court her. The man who caught her eye, though, was a country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. With a dirt-poor upbringing and few prospects beyond a career in politics, he hardly made a fitting match with the accomplished, attractive and ambitious Mary. Yet their shared passions and intellectual pursuits brought them together and the two soon formed a close bond. Although Mary’s family did not approve of Lincoln, the pair married at Elizabeth’s home on 4 November 1842. Over the next 11 years, living in Springfield, they had four sons – Robert, Edward, Willie and Tad – but it was not the happiest of marriages. Lincoln spent long periods of time away from home, either campaigning for office or travelling as a circuit lawyer. Then, in 1850, their son Edward died from tuberculosis at the age of three. Coming less than a year after her father had passed away, a traumatised Mary fell into depression. It would not be the last time. Yet all the while, she proved a crucial partner of her husband’s burgeoning political career, hosting events with influential people and acting as a behind-the-scenes counsel. With her support, he rose to be a presidential candidate for the anti-slavery Republican Party in the 1860 election – where, incidentally, one of his opponents would be none other than Douglas, the man who had unsuccessfully courted Mary. Following Lincoln’s victory, the family moved to Washington, DC, and Mary prepared for her role as First Lady. Was Abraham Lincoln gay? Despite his marriage to Mary, the question of Lincoln’s sexuality has been widely debated with a growing school of thought claiming that he was gay or bisexual. Oh, Mary!’s Lincoln is very much married to Mary for appearances only. In his youth, he was, according to his stepmother, “not very fond of girls,” and had intensely close relationships with several man, particularly Joshua Speed, a partner in a Springfield general store. Before his marriage, Lincoln shared a bed with Speed for a number of years, and they wrote intimate letters to each other. During his presidency, he was said to have shared a bed with his bodyguard, David Derickson. Yet there is no definitive evidence of Lincoln’s sexuality. Such claims have been refuted with the argument that, in the 19th century, it was far from uncommon for men to share a bed in a non-sexual way. His relationships with men like Speed were a clear sign of intimacy, but not necessarily sexual attraction. The debate, therefore, continues. Mary Todd Lincoln as First Lady By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861, seven southern states had seceded from the Union and the American Civil War was about to break out. This posed an immediate problem for Mary. As she was born to a slave owner in Kentucky, a state which now straddled the Union North and Confederate South, questions were raised about her loyalty. Indeed, she had a brother and three half-brothers had fought for the South; two of her half-brothers had died for it. Mary, however, opposed slavery and was committed to her husband’s cause. To that end, she visited hospitals and battlefields, supported the Contraband Relief Association – which provided food, clothing, shelter and medical care to freed slaves – and set about sprucing up the White House in order to present a stable, modern government. Those renovations came under attack from the press, who criticised her wild spending habits on the lavish redecorations. Around this time, in another moment of visible excess, she took to stockpiling expensive, glamorous gowns made by her personal dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckley, who had been formerly enslaved but had forged a reputation as a successful seamstress. Vilified and unpopular, Mary then suffered the tragic loss of another son when Willie, aged 11, died of typhoid fever in 1862. Falling into despair, she did not leave her room for months and so missed the funeral, which was held in the East Room of the White House. Meanwhile, the physical ailments that peppered her adult life worsened, including headaches, mood swings and almost manic fits of extravagant spending. In the years since, Mary’s health has fuelled countless attempts at diagnosis, ranging from bipolar disorder to an autoimmune disease called pernicious anaemia. After her losses, a desperate Mary turned to spiritualism and even held seances in the hopes of reconnecting with her lost children. More loss followed just three years later when, on 14 April 1865 – just as the outlook appeared brighter with the end of the war – Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Mary was sitting next to him in Ford’s Theatre when he was shot in the back of the head. Read more | Could modern medicine have saved Abraham Lincoln? What happened to Mary Todd Lincoln after Abraham’s death? With her mental health deteriorating in the aftermath of Abraham’s assassination, Mary fled the US – where grief and bad press plagued her – and travelled in Europe for several years. She grew increasingly paranoid about money, despite continuing her excessive spending, and lobbied for a widow’s pension from Congress, which was granted in 1870. The following year, however, she had to endure yet another death: her son Tad, shortly after turning 18. Now in a deep depression, she returned to the US, where her last surviving son, Robert, became extremely concerned about her erratic behaviour. He called for a trial on her sanity that resulted in Mary being institutionalised in 1875, confined to a sanatorium for several months. Even after being released and a second trial declaring her to be sane, the public humiliation was all but complete. After a second escape to Europe, she spent her last years in failing health and living in Springfield once again. On 16 July 1882, aged 63, Mary died of a stroke at her sister’s home, the same building where she had married Abraham almost 40 years earlier. She was buried alongside her husband and three sons in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield.
The Victorians were facing a population crisis, until this ‘obscene’ invention turned out to be the solution
In the first half of the 19th century, England’s population doubled. With many families struggling to survive, the picture had to change – and the solution came in an innovative treatment of one material: rubber. But as the question of ‘respectable’ reproduction emerged, Ruth Goodman explains how the invention also widened an already broad class divide
The air in Victorian London was thick with smog. In the narrow streets of the rapidly industrialising city, where the city’s poorest families lived cheek by jowl, every child born stretched meagre resources thinner still. For those in the working class, wages were uncertain and the cost of living presented constant challenges. Yet, despite the hardship, children kept coming – one after another, year after year. With most families lacking access to contraception, there was no realistic alternative. Big families: the Victorian ideal? “One of the things that we all think we know about Victorian families was that they all had huge numbers of children”, explains historian Ruth Goodman in her HistoryExtra Academy series on Victorian Life. This is true: between 1800 and 1850, England’s population had doubled, and by the time Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, families across the social spectrum were getting bigger. Victoria herself had nine children with her husband, Prince Albert, providing an example for others to follow. But outside of the royal family, this birth rate boom placed huge pressure on the resources of families who were scraping by on meagre livings amid the industrial revolution. But as the century progressed the image of the archetypal Victorian family – respectable, hardworking and moral – began to change. Now, smaller, controlled families were becoming the ideal. This had a noticeable effect on the population. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-464466975-aca8503-e1775055434278.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colourful Victorian pop‑up illustration opens to reveal Queen Victoria seated with a child while Prince Albert plays on the floor with two others in an ornate domestic interior." title="A c1845 depiction of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at home, playing with their children. The royal couple and their nine offspring were seen as the perfect example of a Victorian family (Image by Getty Images)" /> “From the 1880s, you can actually see the effects of contraception turning up in family size,” Goodman says. “In the census and the records, you can see that middle class families are getting smaller.” Read more | Think the Victorians were prudes? Their filthiest jokes will shock you Early Victorian contraception This was largely down to new discussions about family limitations. Shrouded in euphemism, the understanding of sex and how to prevent pregnancy was starting to be framed as a health concern. Goodman explains how it was often covered by the phrase: “Being kind to your wife”. Framing contraception in this way placed the onus on parents to prevent excessive numbers of children for their own good. The idea was that a respectable family wouldn’t have more children than they could feed, and a decent father would ensure his children had a mother to look after them. “Quiet discussions are had within certain groups of society about [not letting] your wife have too many children,” says Goodman. One argument was that “it’s not healthy for her, she should be around in good health to bring up the children you already have.” What contraception was available? In today’s world, there’s an array of accessible contraception. In the Victorian era, the options were more limited. However, there was one development that changed the game: the vulcanisation of rubber. Vulcanisation – the process of improving the durability and pliability – of rubber was patented by British inventor Thomas Hancock in November 1843 and became more widespread in the mid-to-late 19th century. The progress and innovation that characterised the Industrial Revolution helped accelerate its commercial success – and one of its most practical uses was for condoms. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-90732016-2629d99-e1775055647469.jpg" width="1500" height="1500" alt="A circular relief sculpture shows a man in formal 19th‑century clothing, with detailed facial features and visible surface cracks." title="A medallion portrait of Thomas Hancock, who obtained the first British patent for vulcanised rubber in 1843 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Condoms in some form had been available for centuries. They had variably been made from sheep guts, linen or other materials – intact condoms made from animal membrane dating to the 1640s were discovered at Dudley Castle – and were almost exclusively used for preventing the spread of venereal disease. The vulcanisation process made rubber “flexible and soft” says Goodman, “so then condoms became made of a softer, more cleanable material.” Read more | From goat eyelids to bread: history's 12 strangest sex toys The introduction of cleanable, reusable rubber condoms in 1855 was revolutionary – and people started to see the possibilities for using condoms in family planning too. Vulcanised rubber also led to the creation of the female cap – a forerunner to diaphragms and cervical caps – which, as Goodman states, “made it possible for a woman to begin to take control of her own fertility”. Due to the hierarchical ‘male breadwinner’ structure of Victorian families, the reality was that decisions regarding reproduction, or lack thereof, were still primarily made by men. However, this development in female contraception did allow women a little more autonomy over their bodies and futures. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-90763429-9b45b35-e1775056110601.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A small, rounded brown object resembling a bowler hat sits on a dark surface, with worn texture and the words “Racial Trade Mark” printed in white on the top." title="A cervical cap, c1920s. The introduction of this contraception gave women a degree of power over their own fertility (Image by Getty Images)" /> A mirror of the class divide Despite the incredible innovations, access to these new methods of contraception was far from equal. “Doctors found their way to manage their own families”, explains Goodman, “but they were not keen on passing that information on to the working classes.” While there was a widespread belief in the need to reduce family sizes, many of those in power tried to stop it. Attempts to make contraceptive advice more accessible through pamphlets were often unsuccessful as it was “decided that these were obscene publications”. Ideas of propriety and morality – as well as objections from the Catholic Church to any ‘unnatural’ birth control – prevented access to communication about sex in any straightforward terms, and in turn, limited people’s understanding of it. In 1877, The Fruits of Philosophy (an 1832 book that advocated for birth control) was the subject of a sensational obscenity trial in London. Activist Annie Besant stood in her own defence, dubbed a “filthy woman” for selling it. As Michael Meyer explained on a previous episode of the HistoryExtra podcast, “[the jury decided it was a] dirty, filthy book, [but] absolved the defendants of any malicious intent in publishing it”. Regardless of intent, Besant and her co-defendant Charles Bradlaugh were found guilty under the Obscene Publications Act 1857. Read more | How I uncovered Victoria's secret love: Historian Fern Riddell explains all Later, their convictions were overturned, and both continued to campaign, with Besant publishing her own birth control pamphlet, The Law of Population. The problem with The Fruits of Philosophy wasn’t its contents – the information inside was nothing that Victorian medical professionals didn’t already know – but that it was being sold at a low enough price for the average person to buy it. The middle classes believed that the pressure of rising population numbers forced the working classes (who they presumed were naturally lethargic) to work harder. This prejudiced – and incorrect – assumption about the nature of working-class people led to deliberate limitations on their access to contraceptive information. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/04/GettyImages-3089859-b6a0f97-e1775056364693.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white historical photo shows two women, a man, and three children standing outside a small shop with jars and baskets visible inside." title="Impoverished people gather in front of a rag shop, c1877. The working classes faced many hardships – some of which were exacerbated by their lack of access to contraception (Image by Getty Images)" /> Even with these rather aggressive attempts to prevent contraceptive advice from being disseminated, the knowledge did spread. Throughout the later years of the 19th century and into the 20th, medical pamphlets, marital guides and private consultations offered methods to regulate conception. For those who could afford discretion and access to physicians, family planning became a means of greater control over their future. For those who couldn’t afford it, though, nothing much changed. In Victorian England, birth control was a mirror of the class divide. It revealed who had enough money to dictate the size of their family, and who had no such luxury.
Writer, campaigner, sociologist: Harriet Martineau was one of the 19th century's most remarkable figures. So why isn't she better known? Stuart Hobday introduces a radical thinker who challenged the status quo
Thinker, feminist, sociologist, campaigner: 19th-century writer Harriet Martineau was a pioneer and a radical across a huge range of areas, but it's very likely you've never heard of her. Stuart Hobday tells Matt Elton about a figure who played a key role in shaping the modern world – and wasn't afraid to ruffle some feathers along the way. Read more about radical women who shaped the modern world in HistoryExtra's extensive collection of articles and podcasts. Go beyond the podcast
Ringing the changes: how the telephone transformed Victorian Britain
To celebrate 150 years since the first telephone call was made, Michael Kay and Coreen McGuire describe how the device reshaped social interactions in Britain – and the somewhat surprising ways it was first used
In autumn 1883, an unusual news story captured the imagination of the British public. It was a tale of deception, fraud – and telephones. On Friday 21 September, a young barrister’s clerk in Birmingham, Robert Danks, set in motion a plan to commit fraud. First he forged a message from a solicitor asking his boss, Jesse Herbert, to travel out of town. Next, he telephoned the office of Herbert’s friend, Alfred Young. Speaking to the clerk, Danks – impersonating Herbert – said he had been called away but had left his cheque book at home. Would Mr Young please lend him £5 (equivalent to more than £500 today – five times Danks’ weekly wage)? Deceived, the clerk agreed, and was told to expect Danks to collect the money – which he did, absconding with it the next day. The story was reported at length across the country – not least because of the novel and ingenious (for the time) method of Danks’ deceit. This was, one commentator noted, the first time the telephone had been used for such fraud – a landmark of sorts in the technology’s short history. Sound idea The first practical functioning telephone was developed by Scottish-born engineer and inventor Alexander Graham Bell, who lived and worked in Canada and the US during the second half of the 19th century. He worked extensively on hearing and speech, experimenting with hearing-aid devices and then acoustic telegraphy – efforts that led to the development of the telephone. Bell was issued the US patent for his telephone on 7 March 1876 – 150 years ago this month. The Bell Telephone Company was established the following year, and within a decade tens of thousands of telephone sets were in use across the US. The first successful demonstration in Britain took place in 1877, and the first telephone exchanges opened in London two years later. By the time of Danks’ fraudulent call, small exchanges up and down the UK were being operated by different companies, invariably serving local business communities. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-464474699webready-add59a2-e1774011650108.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph two women sitting at a low table in front of a large wall with several thick wires across it. Each woman is dressed in a long Victorian dress, with their hair up" title="Wired for sound Telephonists at work for the General Post Office c1905. The GPO gradually replaced local exchanges across Britain at the turn of the 20th century. (Image by GettyImages)" /> But were people talking about telephones more than they were talking through them? When it was first introduced, everyone agreed that the telephone was a marvellous invention – though its purpose was far from clear. Was it a device for relaying the sounds of concerts and church sermons? Perhaps it was more useful in the mining industry, utilising the telephone microphone’s sensitivity to vibrations in order to monitor the quality and density of air, and so guard against the build-up of explosive gases? People did use the telephone to speak to each other, but a subscription to a telephone exchange was expensive – often £15 or £20 a year – so for the first several decades in Britain it remained very much a business tool. As well as barristers such as Herbert and Young, early exchange telephone subscribers included companies involved in large local industries – for example, wool in Yorkshire, cotton in Lancashire, jute in Dundee and steel in Sheffield. Also prominent in early telephone directories are professional firms such as solicitors, doctors and banks, as well as local councils and chambers of commerce. In those first decades, contemporaries observed how few telephone subscribers and devices the UK had compared with other countries. That’s in part because the communications context at that time was rich and diverse. Thanks to the success of the telegraph system, the effective penny post service and cheap messenger boys, the telephone had less immediate impact on communication in Britain than elsewhere. Read more | The radio revolution: how Britain found its frequency In addition, the usefulness of exchange telephony depended entirely on who else was also using it. This did not necessarily mean that being in a bigger network was better: many subscribers preferred smaller, more exclusive networks. Subscribers were also concerned about privacy: they didn’t want to be available to just anyone who could wander into a public call office and make demands on their time – nor to leave themselves open to fraudsters like Danks. In short, it suited many subscribers to keep the telephone network limited. And certainly, no one could imagine why the ‘working man’ might need a telephone. Regardless of subscribers’ preferences, exchange companies realised the importance of encouraging groups of subscribers to join at the same time. This often meant targeting professional communities such as lawyers or doctors, whose offices tended to cluster together in the same geographical area within a town. Many companies sold telephony by advertising that they connected their exchanges up to local police and fire stations, and sometimes also to doctors. In sickness and in health In August 1879, shortly before the first British telephone exchanges were established, Eva Lückes wrote a letter to the Telephone Company, which had been established to promote Bell’s patents in Britain. Lückes – the lady superintendent at the Hospital for Sick Children in Pendlebury, Manchester – wanted to thank the company for her telephones. These were used throughout the hospital, but had proved most valuable in the fever ward, where telephony enabled communication without the risk of infection. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-463911827webready-5706511-e1774011631346.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colourful illustration shows four men at dinner: three are sitting at the table while another stands up alongside them. To the right, another man in a suit, carrying a tray is talking into a large tube, sending a message to the room below" title="Upstairs, downstairs A waiter talks to kitchen staff in a restaurant. Before telephony, the speaking tube was a relatively common way to communicate. (Image by GettyImages)" /> Over the next few years, other medical professionals extolled the virtues of the telephone. “All of us must have felt the heartaching anxiety of longing to hear the voice of a dear friend when either ourselves lying on, or the friend being confined to, a bed of sickness,” noted the medical journal The Lancet. Unlike the speaking tubes that had been common for some time, but through which infection could be transmitted, telephones allowed contagious patients speak directly to family and friends while remaining safely isolated. Following an outbreak of scarlet fever in London in 1887, The Lancet was moved to recognise that this kind of remote contact had a curative power. The strength of this belief increased as the system proliferated, and special telephones for hospital patients were increasingly commonplace in the interwar years. In addition, the telephone achieved lasting clinical utility as an audiometer – a device to quantify individual levels of hearing loss in numerical terms. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/HHG5ADwebready-cb80a99-e1774011609462.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Testing time An illustration shows a young man’s hearing being assessed using a Hughes audiometer, invented by David Edward Hughes c1879. (Image by Alamy)" title="Testing time An illustration shows a young man’s hearing being assessed using a Hughes audiometer, invented by David Edward Hughes c1879. (Image by Alamy)" /> Despite these benefits, many people feared that the telephone might pose risks, particularly to users’ mental health. In May 1879, The Times lamented that businessmen’s lives had become increasingly busy, unpredictable and reactive following the advent of telegraphy – a situation that would only get worse with the proliferation of telephones. Concerns about how telephony had increased the pace of modern life, and the associated stress that came with this, were commonplace in this period. In October 1882, the popular science writer Phoebe Lankester encountered a telephone in a private house, and wrote in her newspaper column that: “Extraordinary as this novel invention is, I am not sure that I quite like the idea of its intrusion into our domestic scenes at any moment of the day… [W]hen it comes to being at the beck and call of any intrusive person who may possess a telephonic wire… no man’s house can thenceforth be called his castle, unless he be brave enough to resist such innovations, and leave himself far behind the rest of the impetuous world – in peace.” Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about Victorian Britain This combination of excitement and anxiety typified the Victorian response to the telephone in the business and domestic spheres. In public spaces, too, overhead telephone wires raised concerns, being viewed as unsightly at best, and even dangerous. Accidents involving falling telephone wires were rare but reported widely. In 1885, the council in Bath was reluctant to establish an exchange at all, citing concerns that overhead wires would disfigure the city, a picturesque and popular tourist destination. The GPO intervenes In most towns and cities, exchanges were established by large companies that were offshoots of the US Bell Telephone Company, operating using Bell’s patents. The largest of these was the National Telephone Company (NTC), which eventually absorbed the other companies operating in different regions around the UK. However, in late 1879, as the first British telephone companies began to establish exchanges, the General Post Office (GPO) successfully argued that the telephone came under its monopoly on telegraphic communications. This was based on its ownership of the telegraph network, which had been nationalised in 1870. As a result of this legal decision, telephone companies required GPO licences to operate. In addition, the GPO began to open its own exchanges around the country. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-3315417webready-054117c-e1774011586519.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Historical photograph of a spacious telephone exchange filled with rows of operators working at manual switchboards. The high, vaulted ceiling and hanging lights frame dozens of workers plugging cables to connect calls" title="from low volume levels to overhearing private conversations between other people. (Image by GettyImages)" /> In towns such as Sheffield, Dundee, Swansea and Preston, local people also established their own exchanges. Despite patent disputes and fierce competition from the larger companies, these were able to operate for many years. Cleverly branding themselves as being run by and for local people, these companies charged lower subscriptions, enabling a broader range of businesses to sign up. They often inspired greater loyalty among their subscribers than the larger companies. Together, these factors meant that, by the late 1880s, towns such as Dundee and Sheffield had some of the most developed exchange telephone infrastructure anywhere in the country. For 30 years, therefore, provision was quite messy, with different companies and the GPO providing services in different areas. This situation ended only in 1912 when the NTC, the last remaining private telephone company, was nationalised. Wartime lifeline Although telephony seemed to be gaining ground in Britain, many in the military still viewed it with scepticism. Telephones proved suitable for point-to-point communication with surveillance balloons from the ground below, and were used as Morse receivers, but they seemed unlikely to replace messenger communications. How could you trust that a barely audible message relayed via this method was sufficiently secure during battle? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-3243926webready-bca04cb-e1774011559272.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Black‑and‑white photograph of a soldier kneeling outdoors, holding a field‑telephone receiver to the ear while speaking into it. The device is wired to a wooden pole fitted with multiple cables and a small switchboard‑like unit. The barren, muddy landscape suggests a wartime setting" title="in October 1918. The needs of the military drove innovations in telephony during the First World War. (Image by GettyImages)" /> The dark, isolated and stagnant conditions of mechanised conflict in the First World War changed everything. Suddenly, telephones became a lifeline – a crucial means of communicating between trenches and relaying news from the battlefront to headquarters. By 1920, the GPO had, at great cost, supplied 40,000 specially protected telephones to the army, meaning they were unable to invest in the development of telephone technology on the home front. Yet this expense was hidden from the public, who complained extensively about the failings of domestic telephony. Reliance on this technology in the context of war drove innovations in audibility and portability. Crucially, clearer transmission of speech was vital, and equipment needed to be light enough for repeated dismantling and movement. These aims were in tension, because improvements to audibility added weight. Improved audibility was also important for the generation of men who had fought in the war. Many of these servicemen suffered deafness or hearing loss from the bombardment of artillery and shells. In 1928, the National Benevolent Society recorded that “33,768 men were discharged from the army and navy on account of deafness”. Symptoms of deafness or deaf mutism also presented with shell shock. So hearing loss was regarded as a national problem in the interwar years. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-3301550webready-8b9948e-e1774266801629.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph showing a woman standing in country road, looking up some fallen telegraph lines. In the background, a small bus is driving towards the camera" title="A woman gazes in bemusement at storm-damaged telephone wires in south Wales, 1939. Overhead lines were initially viewed as unsightly or even dangerous. (Image by GettyImages)" /> Though valve technology had improved the telephone, individual voices remained hard to comprehend. Early telephone lines were noisy, open and messy, with background noise described in a Birmingham newspaper in 1888 as “a buzzing obbligato which gives a faint suggestion of bees, but has no precise resemblance to anything in nature”. In addition, problems of induction between overhead wires, with signals from one call leaking into another, often led to subscribers being able to overhear supposedly private conversations. This had obvious privacy implications for those engaged in business conversations, as did fears of exchange operators listening in on calls. In 1897, a Glasgow corn merchant, Anton Kufeke, described overhearing a conversation between his competitor and a customer, thereby learning that the competitor was selling more cheaply than he was. This was sensitive business information. In 1893, another Glasgow subscriber recounted a conversation he had overheard between a man and a woman: after a brief exchange, the man announced that he was going for a clean shave – and another listener on the line commented “Is that a clean shirt you’re going for? You need one badly”. The conversation finished with various listeners joining in a rendition of a popular song. Read More | How did Bletchley Park shape the success of D-Day? Agitations from exchange subscribers in Leeds and Glasgow in local newspapers in the late 1880s and early 1890s illustrate the great difficulties many faced in trying to use their telephones. One correspondent in Leeds wrote that: “I occupy more time in communicating through it than I should do if I went to the offices or places of business of nine out of ten of the persons with whom I wish to communicate.” A Glasgow subscriber said that one thing he had learned from using the telephone and overhearing his colleagues and neighbours was just how much they swore when frustrated. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-515579042webready-0db1e60-e1774267416605.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Black‑and‑white photograph of a telephone operator seated at a manual switchboard. She wears a cloth mask over her nose and mouth and speaks into a candlestick‑style telephone. Papers and notes lie on the desk beside the switchboard equipment" title="Wearing a gauze mask, a telephone operator works during the devastating flu pandemic that spread across the world from 1918 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Restricted information A broad range of people struggled with such issues, including some who had trouble following telephone conversations yet didn’t consider themselves to have hearing loss in other contexts. It was strange to have access to speech without visual information. Moreover, the frequency band of the telephone was restricted, so people making or receiving calls were receiving far less sonic information than when talking in person. These difficulties are clear from a 1923 advice sheet issued by the GPO. This gave instructions on what to say when picking up the receiver, and how to speak with maximum audibility and effectiveness. Users were counselled to speak “clearly”, and to roll the rhotic R when saying the number three, because the telephone would blur consonants and elide vowel sounds. “The telephone is no louder or clearer now than it was 40 years ago,” HA Garratt complained to The Times in 1934. Although he admitted that he was “just the least bit deaf”, he still could hear the wireless perfectly well, which led him to conclude that the telephone model he possessed was faulty. Faced with such criticisms, it became clear how the GPO could both recoup financial losses sustained in the war and move beyond issuing edicts to encourage clear speech: by repurposing technology used in the trenches to create amplified telephony. When the telephone was first introduced, the deaf community was excited about the possibility that the new device could be used as a hearing aid. Bell’s wife and mother were both deaf, and the telephone had in fact been initially designed as a type of hearing aid. Instead, it initially excluded the hard of hearing. Moreover, its development encouraged the measurement of levels of deafness in increasingly narrow and strict terms. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/10720997webready-b2202ae-e1774266977716.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A small brown pouch with a long strap, alongside two small vials, one yellow, one black. The vials are attached to a small black box which has a pale wire with an earpiece attached to it" title="Hear this A body-worn Medresco portable hearing aid. Such analogue devices were supplied by the NHS from the late 1940s until the early 1980s" /> The first amplified telephone designed for people with limited hearing was advertised by the GPO in 1924 “for the use of ‘Deaf Subscribers’ who experience difficulty in the use of the standard telephone”. It featured a controlling key to adjust the volume; this was stored in a separate wooden box, along with the valve amplifier. Following numerous complaints from customers about the stigmatising box, an improved amplifier telephone was released in 1934. The new device was cheaper, with a freehand microtelephone – the volume control being embedded in the telephone itself rather than in a box – and more powerful valves to boost the signal and increase the volume. Previous models comprised a separate receiver, held to the ear, and a transmitter into which one spoke. Newly integrated receivers combined the two, creating the telephone familiar to us today. When using early devices, people with hearing loss had been able to press the receiver to their mastoid bone, behind the ear, receiving the sounds via bone conduction. As the GPO explained, such users “had been accustomed to holding the bell receiver to the bone at the back of the ear to obtain best reception for his [sic] particular deafness”. This was not possible with the integrated receiver, and the GPO received a flood of complaints. In the UK, categories of deafness were defined according to audiological tests that were themselves biased, being driven by the GPO’s development of Artificial Ear technology. This machine designated standards of normal hearing in narrow mechanical parameters. The standardisation of ‘normal’ hearing and the categorisation of the deaf was therefore created in line with the priorities of the Post Office’s telephone system. Those who did not fit within the GPO’s standards were categorised as customers in need of a “telephone service for the deaf”. So ‘deafness’ was constructed both socially and technologically at the behest of the GPO. Despite these obvious limitations and biases, the GPO was a repository of expertise in electroacoustics in Britain during the interwar years, and it engineered the first NHS hearing aid – the Medresco. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/03/GettyImages-1498115609webready-e515da9-e1774267518636.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Black‑and‑white photograph of a person in a fuzzy striped sweater standing beside a wooden bookshelf, holding a cream‑coloured rotary telephone receiver to their ear. Books, a potted plant, and framed botanical prints appear in the background" title="By 1960, when this studio portrait of a model was taken, telephones were installed in many British homes (Image by Getty Images)" /> Change and change again Today, an irony often highlighted is that technologies designed to bring us together are actually having the effect of isolating us. Yet, as we have seen, communication and isolation have been in tension since telephony began. The telephone was always perceived as a threat to societal mental health, and there were always isolated portions of society unable to make and receive calls easily. In recent years, mobile phones have changed our behaviour. Domestic landlines are becoming rarer, for example, largely replaced by smartphones. For a time, landlines were important for the roll-out of the internet, with dial-up connections being the norm before broadband usurped that technology. Today, many young people dislike speaking on the phone, instead preferring to communicate through text. But as we embrace a more individualistic model of telephony, do we appreciate what has been lost with the decline of the home phone, with access to it shared by members of a family or friend group? Whatever your take on such a question, aspects of mobile-phone culture might well seem familiar to our forebears. In 1885, a London-based commentator wryly described a group “telephone party”: “There sat about 15 well-dressed persons, gazing straight in front, apparently deep in thought, and with a black tube held up to one ear. They heeded not the entry of anyone, and silence and inactivity reigned supreme.” The ever-evolving telephone has radically reshaped our lives – but concerns about its impact on mental health and wellbeing are nothing new. Michael Kay is a senior learning designer at King’s College, London. Coreen McGuire is a historian of interwar Britain, and assistant professor of history at Durham University This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine