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The female codebreakers of Bletchley Park
Historian Tessa Dunlop shines a light on the secret and undervalued work of the women of Bletchley Park, without whom the codebreaking successes of the Second World War could not have happened
Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire was one of Britain's most famous institutions during the Second World War, home to codebreaking triumphs that turned the tide against the Nazi regime. Britain’s codebreaking operation has been dominated by a male narrative – a star-studded cast of 20th-century brain boxes, led by mathematician Alan Turing. His outstanding role in the creation of the bombe machine, an electromechanical testing device essential for unravelling German Enigma encoded messages, was hugely significant. It is a feat perhaps only rivalled by that of Tommy Flowers, the engineer who designed the even more advanced Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer. Yet Bletchley Park depended on the heft of a predominantly female workforce, not least Turing's own fiancée, Joan Clarke. The women who worked at Bletchley have often been overlooked in this story because, with the exception of three or four female cryptanalysts, the vast majority of top-end codebreakers during the war were men. The story of how girl power – often school-girl power – turned what began as an eccentric experiment into the world’s most impressive codebreaking factory is less well known, but no less important. Who worked at Britain's wartime intelligence factory In 1938, with war on the horizon, the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS) – the precursor to the modern GCHQ – temporarily moved out of London, to avoid bombing raids, but by August 1939, its secret home in Bletchley Park had become permanent. Initially, this fledging operation was staffed by just 186 people. ‘Men of a professor type’, particularly mathematicians were targeted, with early recruits including Turing, Gordon Welchman and Alfred Dillwyn Knox. Their work, however, was supported by an expanding team of chiefly civilian women. Perhaps inevitably at the beginning of the war, Establishment Britain recruited from their own when it came to Bletchley’s secret operations. The German military must never know that Britain was in the process of achieving what Hitler believed to be impossible – the decoding of Enigma. It was imperative that those selected could be trusted to keep quiet, and from kinship springs trust. Many of the first women at Bletchley Park came from ruling-class families who knew each other. Who were the Bletchley women? Lady Jean was a 19-year-old Scottish aristocrat and debutante. She had been tipped off about a “hush, hush mission at Bletchley Park” by her father’s friend, Lord Mountbatten. Actress Pamela Rose (née Gibson), received a letter from an “interfering godmother”. If girls’ education was rarely a priority between the wars, an upper-class focus on being accomplished and attending foreign finishing schools certainly had its advantages. Pamela’s understanding of German, for example, was deemed to be useful for filing decrypted messages. For that work she sacrificed her first role on the West End. From the outset, Bletchley, aka Station X, could not operate without the constant ‘traffic’ of German Enigma messages. This came from the Y Service, Bletchley’s vital other half, with its numerous listening stations intercepting German radio communications. Among the staff of the Y Service were members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, or ‘Wrens’. One of these was 18-year-old Pat Davies (née Owtram). Assigned as a Special Duties Linguist after an intense training course, her first post on a “highly secret mission” was at Withernsea, Yorkshire. “As soon as one of the German ships came up, you wrote down exactly what you heard,” she later recalled. A lot of what Pat remembers was the meaningless clumps of letters. “Anton, Bertha, Cesar... I always thought it was odd hearing the war all the time from the German side. The whole thing would be written down and then one of us would call Station X. I had no idea what Station X was.” Pat was one of many secret ‘listeners’, whose precious encoded data was being sent to the rapidly expanding team at Bletchley. Read more | The changing role of women in British computing In late 1941, for the first time in British history, conscription for women was introduced. By then Bletchley was already reliant on a massive female workforce, like so many other wartime institutions. A group of the original cryptanalysts had sent a stern missive that October to Winston Churchill saying they did not have sufficient resources and staff, which saw the prime minister instantly and dramatically scale up operations. It would keep growing so that by 1944, Bletchley employed 8,743 workers, three-quarters of whom were women. Although ‘posh’ civilian girls were first to arrive, the sheer numbers required saw the majority of staff being recruited by the military services. Among them was Charlotte 'Betty' Webb (née Vine-Stevens), who was 19 when she was selected from her Auxiliary Territorial Service training camp. Shifts took place in a small room in the Bletchley mansion. “I worked on the card index, putting things into date order and registering them under their call signs. Nothing was in clear language. It was all in groups of letters or figures on sheets of paper – masses of them,” says Betty. Her job was not to understand, but to register every message passing across her desk. 3 women of Bletchley Park Pamela Rose (née Gibson) Pamela’s war work began with her recruitment to the indexing department of Hut 4. She was one of the very few examples of women being promoted from “humdrum roles”. Pamela became head of Naval Indexing, a section that has subsequently been hailed as a precursor of the Information Age. Co-ordinating vital fact-finding forays long before the advent of the microchip, she remains modest about her wartime achievements. “I think I was promoted because I couldn’t type! Yes I suppose most of the Heads of Sections meetings were with men. I was given my own room and had some responsibility but I missed the girls’ chatter.” Pat Davies (née Owtram) While she was not based at Bletchley, Pat was a Wren in the Y Service, which saw her move between three English coastal locations. Her final listening post was Abbot’s Cliff in Kent. At the age of 95, Pat remains a tireless champion of her secret war work: lectures, theatre tours, television appearances, she uses any means available to explain her time at the coalmface of Britain’s massive interception mission. “Doing this work at an early age meant my life went down a totally different track. Before the war, my parents said ‘we can’t afford to send you to university’, but in the end I went to three of the very top ones.” Pat studied at St Andrews, Oxford and Harvard, before she embarked on a stellar media career as a producer in the then-new medium of television. Betty Webb (née Vine-Stevens) In 2015, Betty received an MBE in recognition of her tireless campaigning and support of Bletchley Park Trust, the museum that has enlightened millions about the work done in secret by thousands of men and women. The award is the pinnacle of an impressive CV. As a reward for a meticulous performance at Bletchley over three years, Betty was transferred in 1944 to a new building in the US: the Pentagon. “I was staggered by the invitation. Me? A humble staff sergeant.” Despite teething problems, cross pollination between British and American codebreakers had increased since 1942. “I was the only ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) girl in the whole building! I did the same job I left behind at the Park. I suppose I was a natural administrator.” Learning to love the Bombe It was Turing’s development of the bombe that radically increased the rate at which Enigma could be read. By 1944, a force of 1,676 Wrens were dutifully tending more than 200 bombes – described as having the appearance of “great metal bookcases” – which were harvesting up to 18,000 Enigma messages daily. Alongside Pat’s interceptions and Charlotte’s data processing came Wren Ruth Bourne (née Henry)'s mechanical vigilance as another component on the codebreaking conveyor belt. Her job was to operate one of the bombes. Churning with around 100 rotating drums, 12 miles of wire and one million soldered connections, it made for an intimidating prospect, but what Ruth thought of her work was irrelevant. “Nice girls do what they are told,” she explains. The bombe was just the first of the industrial sized behemoths that transformed life at the Park. Another Wren, Joanna Chorley (née Stradling), worked in the Newmanry, a section tasked with reading the highly sophisticated ‘Fish’ communications sent using the Lorenz cipher between Hitler and his high command. Up to a hundred times longer than Enigma, Fish messages were invaluable. So much so that a technological whopper was born to analyse their contents: Colossus. Joanna remembers her first meeting with the machine, which was the size of a room: “It was ticking away, and the tapes were going around and all the valves, and I thought what an amazing machine. Like magic and science combined!” Joanna had fallen in love with the world’s first electronic computer. “It’s a bit silly really isn’t it? But I did love the beast,” she recalled. Life as a Bletchley girl For many of the Bletchley Girls, their roles were compartmentalised and prioritised accuracy, stamina and occasionally a foreign language. Lady Jean was disappointed with her job. Her shift work, designed to make up for a short fall of bombe machines, was frustratingly repetitive. “I marked letters in German messages, then perforated those same marks and compared one message on top of another. If three holes were on the top of three other marked ones, these were put through the hatch to the next room. Doing this for a year sent me nearly crazy.” Exceptional moments were keenly savoured. Rozanne Colchester (née Medhurst) was a teenager who could speak Italian courtesy of a childhood spent in Rome. Her basic decoding was formulaic and the information revealed fairly dull, but late one night “after many trials and errors I found myself faced with a message that made sense”. In her small work room in Buckinghamshire, she read something no one else in the Allied forces knew – in three and a half hours, Italy’s SM.79 torpedo bombers and SM.82 transport carriers would leave Tripoli and head across the Mediterranean. Listen | Tessa Dunlop shares the stories of women who worked at Britain’s codebreaking centre in World War Two With the Desert War over by June 1943, the crippled Italians were making for Sicily, but thanks to Rozanne they never reached their destination. The information she read was radioed to the RAF in North Africa. “Very soon our aeroplanes were in the air and all the Italian aircraft were shot down!” Few experienced such stand-out moments, but all of the women remember the onus placed on secrecy. No one could forget their introduction to the Official Secrets Act. Charlotte recalls a vast document she was forced to read on the spot. Ruth was told if she broke her oath of secrecy, she would go to prison “at the very least”. Joanna was under no illusions, either: “We knew damn well what will happen if we blab. It will kill people. We knew we couldn’t talk for a reason.” During his only visit to the Park in 1941, Winston Churchill described Bletchley as “the goose that laid the golden egg but never cackled”. And everyone kept their secrets for more than 30 years. Bletchley’s impact on the war is now common knowledge, but before the 1970s some Bletchley Girls weren’t even aware they had been involved in codebreaking. Pat was one of them. “It was surprising to hear that Bletchley had achieved such great things,” she says, “because at the time we never got any feedback. We didn’t know how important we had been.” Tessa Dunlop is a historian and broadcaster. This article first appeared in BBC History Revealed
Armistice Day: what does it commemorate? Why are poppies worn? Plus 4 more things you need to know
Armistice Day takes place on 11 November each year and marks the end of the First World War. It is a day of commemoration, an occasion to remember the some 8.5 million soldiers who died across the world during the 1914–18 war – as well as those lost in the conflicts that have followed. But how much do you know about it?
What was Armistice Day? Armistice Day – today known as Remembrance Day in the UK and several Commonwealth countries, and Veterans Day in the USA – commemorates the armistice, an agreement to end the fighting of the First World War as a prelude to peace negotiations, which was signed on 11 November 1918. Peace came into effect six hours after the armistice was signed, at 11am – or at the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month". Today, Remembrance Day and Veterans Day events include many traditions that began in commemoration of the losses suffered in the Great War, and have evolved to memorialise those who have since died in conflicts across the world. As we prepare to commemorate the end of the First World War, HistoryExtra brings you six facts about Armistice Day, from the first poppy appeal to the burial of the Unknown Warrior… What was the armistice and when was it signed? At 2.05am on 11 November 1918, after four years of conflict, a German delegation sat down in the railway carriage of Allied supreme commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch, a few hours’ north of Paris. Talks had gone on for three days, and the German delegates were close to accepting the terms for an armistice, a formal agreement to end the fighting. The Germans had been defeated after a brutal summer of attrition; over the past four months, Allied and American forces had overwhelmed the final line of German defences in the battles of the Hundred Days Offensive. On 9 November 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II had been persuaded to seek asylum in the Netherlands. Read more | 11 November 1918: The day the world turned upside down In the early hours of 11 November, final terms were laid out and at 5.12am, the armistice was signed. It declared the “cessation of hostilities by land and in the air six hours after the signing”. Terms of the agreement included: the immediate German withdrawal from the territories they had acquired during the conflict; the disarmament and demobilisation of the German military; and the release of Allied prisoners. The terms made it impossible for Germany to resume any fighting. This was the last of the September – November 1918 armistices between the warring nations, and peace came into effect six hours after the armistice was signed, at 11am – or at the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month". It has been estimated that during the time between the signing and the announcement of peace, the war produced a further 11,000 casualties. The armistice was never intended to be a permanent peace treaty between the nations; this would be attempted with the Treaty of Versailles, signed seven months later. In January 1919, the leaders of 32 countries met in Paris – without Germany. Negotiations were led by the ‘big three’: British prime minister David Lloyd George; French prime minister Georges Clemenceau; and US president Woodrow Wilson. The aim of the treaty was to make sure that Germany would never again pose a military threat to the rest of Europe. It left Germany with reduced territories, a significantly smaller army and navy, and the duty to assume ‘war guilt’ and pay an unspecified amount of ‘reparations’ to the Allies. Read more | When and why did the US enter WW1? The terms of the treaty were considered harsh by many, and British prime minister David Lloyd George predicted: "We shall have to fight another war again in 25 years’ time." After the treaty was signed in June 1919, some right-wing German movements framed the signing of the armistice by German commanders in 1918 as a ‘stab in the back’. The treaty is often regarded to be a key factor in the rise of German military sentiment and action in the 1930s, giving way to the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party. In a symbolic action, the same train carriage in which the November 1918 armistice was signed was later used by Adolf Hitler when he accepted France’s surrender to the German forces in 1940. Read more | The First World War: Was it worth it? When was the first Armistice Day? Not to be confused with Remembrance Sunday, which is marked on the second Sunday of November each year, Armistice Day has been commemorated on 11 November since the first anniversary of the end of the First World War, in November 1919. As part of the first year events, King George V hosted a banquet at Buckingham Palace “in Honour of The President of the French Republic". A two-minute silence was also held for the fallen, and ever since it has since been a tradition in Britain to pause for a two-minute silence at 11am on 11 November to remember those killed in the war. This has since been extended to commemorate the lives lost in other conflicts. Over the last century, the day has become a more sombre day of reflection, marked with poppies and respectful silence. However, 11 November 1918 was a moment of wild celebration for many. “The day the war ended was a weird and wonderful carnival rather than the day of mournful seriousness that Armistice Day would become in later years,” wrote Guy Cuthbertson for BBC History Magazine. “The armistice brought church services and tears, but it was a day of joy, spontaneity, noise and fun.” Read more | Debate: Is British history too fixated with the story of the world wars? In Cambridge, students threw books, a bull was driven into one of the colleges, and an effigy of the kaiser was burned in the market square while people danced round the bonfire. On 12 November, the Daily Mirror reported: “Conversation in the Strand was impossible owing to the din of cheers, whistles, hooters and fireworks”. While the initial celebrations were filled with relief and jubilation in many quarters, the soldiers still had to be ‘demobbed’ and huge swathes of the population were irrevocably changed. Peter Hart, an oral historian at the Imperial War Museum’s Sound Archive, wrote in 2009 about the many soldiers who returned home with mental and physical scars.“Many had presumed that they would not live to see the end of the war. Part of their mental defences was the idea that they had nothing to look forward to; that as doomed men they did not have much to lose if they were killed. In a flash their mental landscape had changed.” The British continued to refer to 1914–18 as ‘the Great War’ in the 1920s and 1930s, but after 1945 they adopted American terminology and spoke of ‘the First World War’ and the ‘Second World War’. According to David Reynolds, professor of international history at the University of Cambridge, this changed the nature of commemoration. “After 1945, both Armistice Day on 11 November and the Two-Minute silence fell out of fashion. Instead, the dead of both world wars were honoured on the nearest weekend, known as Remembrance Sunday,” he explained in an article for BBC History Magazine. For Reynolds, the last third of the 20th century stands in contrast with what had come before, as, with the retreat from empire, compulsory military service was abandoned. “Apart from the Falklands, foreign wars seemed a relic of the past,’ he writes. “But over the last quarter-century, war has returned to our national agenda, in the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan. The deaths of young soldiers today gives new life and meaning to stories and poems from Britain’s greatest war. The two-minute silence has gained new resonance, likewise the poppy appeal.” When did Armistice Day become Remembrance Day and Veterans Day? The commemorations of Armistice Day evolved into today's observed days of memorial – Remembrance Day in many Commonwealth countries and Veterans Day in the USA. The day, 11 November, became an official national holiday in the United States in 1938. In 1954 the name was changed to Veterans Day, in order to honour those who had served in all US wars. Read more | A brief history of Memorial Day in the US Why do many people wear poppies on Remembrance Day? The poppy is forever linked with the landscapes of the First World War, with the deep red flower covering many battlefields on the western front. The first poppy appeal took its symbol from a 1915 poem written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, a Canadian doctor. McCrae wrote 'In Flanders Fields' after one of his friends, a young Canadian soldier, was killed by an exploding German artillery shell. The opening verse cements the symbol of poppies as a “mark” for the fallen: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.” The British Legion was established in May 1921, with the intent to aid and improve the lives of ex-servicemen and their wives and children, as well as widows, parents and orphans who had lost family during the war. The legion adopted the poppy as a symbol of remembrance, with the first held Poppy Day on 11 November 1921. Today it is seen most commonly in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The symbol has also been the subject of some controversy. Some claim that its “blood-red” colour represents war and death, while others choose to wear a white poppy. Why do some people choose to wear a white poppy? The white symbol was first adopted in the 1930s by the Peace Pledge Union, with the aim of representing “remembrance of all victims of war”, rather than the red poppy which “symbolises remembrance of British armed forces and its allies rather than enemies and civilians who also died in wars”. The Royal British Legion has stated that the red poppy remains “an emblem of remembrance and hope” and should not be seen as a symbol of religion or politics. What is the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior? After the First World War, in which Britain saw the loss of nearly three quarters of a million people, it was almost impossible to bring home such a large number of bodies. So the dead were interred and commemorated along the battlefronts in nearly a thousand cemeteries and monuments constructed by the Imperial War Graves Commission, in what was one of the biggest public works projects of the 1920s. However, many soldiers had been literally blown to bits by shellfire and their remains were never found. In November 1920, the tomb of the Unknown Warrior was created at the west end of the nave of Westminster Abbey. The tomb was the idea of Folkestone clergyman Reverend David Railton, who had seen a grave in France marked with a cross and pencilled words: "An Unknown British Soldier". He believed that the families of those who had died, but had no graves, should have somewhere to grieve. The grave contains soil from France, is covered by a slab of black Belgian marble from a quarry near Namur, and contains the remains of unknown British servicemen exhumed from four battle areas: the Aisne, the Somme, Arras and Ypres. The burial in November 1920 was attended by leading politicians, senior military figures and King George V. During the following week, an estimated 1.25 million people visited the tomb. On her wedding day in 1923, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon – later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother – laid her wedding bouquet on the tomb, in honour of her elder brother Fergus, who had been killed at the battle of Loos. The tradition has since been carried on by other royal brides, including Princess Beatrice, who placed her wedding bouquet on the Grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey after her wedding in 2020. How have Armistice commemorations changed in the 21st century? In 2018, remembrance commemorations took place across the world to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. Around 10,000 flames were lit at the Tower of London, while British prime minister Theresa May and French president Emmanuel Macron marked the signing of the armistice on 9 November with a meeting at the Somme memorial in Albert, northern France. Many considered whether the most commonly recognised symbols of the First World War still go ‘far enough’ in the 21st century. Professor Maggie Andrews, professor of cultural history at the University of Worcester, recently described the “myth of the stoic young British Tommy – duped into volunteering for a futile war”, which gained status in the run-up to the centenary, especially in the context of more modern conflicts. “The Tommy as a reticent, rather than active participant in the killing of enemy troops is central, for example, to the mythical status of the Christmas day football matches played in no man’s land, 1914,” she wrote. “Myths are not fabrication, but they simplify, purify and silence, while smoothing over the cracks and crevices – the bumps and lumps – of the past, as they are woven into heritage attractions or film and television histories.” Elsewhere, historian David Olusoga wrote for BBC World Histories on the extensive contributions of Africans and Asians to the conflict, and going beyond the western front. “The First World War was global in a way that previous wars had not been. Not only were battles fought in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and naval engagements across the world’s oceans, but men (and some women) from every continent were drawn into Europe to fight in the trenches, to labour in the militarised zones behind the lines, and to populate the factories that fed the great war machine of the Entente Powers.” This article was first published by HistoryExtra in November 2018 and has since been updated
Why are there three lions on the shirts of the English football teams?
The three lions became a symbol of England thanks to 12th-century warmonger King Henry I who is popularly held to have been unable to speak a word of English himself...
Why are lions so closely aligned with the English national identity? Why are there three of them? And why do they grace the English football teams' shirts? The desultory answer to the football part is that the three lions are also the emblem of the Football Association, the sport's governing body in England. They have been part of strip since the first official international in 1872, when England played Scotland, ending in a 0-0 draw. Still, that doesn't explain where the FA got them from. Read more: 5 facts about the history of football Why are the three lions on the English football team shirt? The FA did not pick their big cats on a whim – a trio of lions has appeared on the arms of every English (and British) monarch since the late 12th century, and has been flown as a battle standard on English soil and abroad. The story is said to begin with King Henry I, whose arms were single golden lion, rampant (rearing on its hind legs) on a red field. He became a widower in 1118, and perhaps would have remained so had his sole male heir not died at sea in the White Ship disaster of 1120. Read more | How a forgotten law helped women’s football conquer the world – but only by accident The following year, he married Adeliza of Louvain. Her father also used a lion, and so Henry adapted his own arms to include two. Skipping a generation brings us to Henry II, who married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152. Her family crest featured a lion as well. It took their son, Richard the Lionheart – a man who, in his entire reign, spent barely six months in England despite being born here – unite the three lions of his forebears into the national symbol it is today. We only know of his arms from two Great Seals, one of which bears the three lions passant-guardant (striding left but facing the observer). Every Plantagenet king used these arms unchanged, lions golden on a field of red, until the ascension of Edward III in 1327. Three lions on a shirt: the alternative explanation There is an alternative theory to why Richard opted for three lions – he simply wanted to show off that as well as being King of England, he was also lord and master of the Dukedom of Normandy and Aquitaine. The symbol of Normandy is two lions, and the symbol of Aquitaine one lion (you can see where this is going). Why are there roses as well as three lions on the England football shirt? The badge on the English football team's shirts bears another very English emblem, a smattering of ten Tudor roses, the propaganda device that symbolises Henry VII uniting the house of Lancaster and the house of York by marrying Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth of York after the Wars of the Roses. Read next: 1966 – how England lost, found and won the World Cup in a single year This article first appeared in BBC History Revealed
Your guide to Neanderthals, plus 7 fascinating facts
Archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes, expert on Neanderthals, explains how the ancient species relate to modern humans – and she shares seven Neanderthal facts that revolutionise our understanding of them
What is a Neanderthal? “From an evolutionary point of view, they are hominins,” Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains. “So they are within the Homo genus. For a long time, they were believed to be not much to do with us, in terms of direct ancestry – they were thought to be more like a branch, like cousins. That’s changed now; at least in part, they did contribute to our genetic legacy. That’s where they sit in an evolutionary sense.” Similarly, it was long thought Neanderthals were primarily European hominins. But, Wragg Sykes explains, we now also understand that they’re a Eurasian species, with an extremely wide geographical range. “They extended from Wales through to Siberia, central Asia and in the Near East,” she says. On the podcast | The Neanderthals: everything you wanted to know In terms of when they existed, there’s evidence of proto-Neanderthals emerging 400,000 years ago. “But they only become clearly visible in fossil and archaeological terms around 350,000 years ago,” explains Wragg Sykes. “They appear to disappear from the archaeological record around 40,000 years ago – except their genes did continue, and they’re present in billions of people today.” And why are they so significant? “Neanderthals were the first hominins that we realised were hominins,” she explains. “They’ve been with us for 160 years, all the way through the development of human evolutionary science, so they give a really interesting case study for how our ideas change, how the methods that we use to investigate them have completely transformed as well.” Neanderthal facts: 7 things you need to know according to Dr Wragg Sykes Neanderthals were not ‘missing links’ When they were discovered more than 160 years ago, Neanderthals blew everyone’s minds. The ideas of 19th-century naturalists Alfred Wallace and Charles Darwin about natural selection weren’t yet published, and the notion that humans had ancient, vanished relations was scarcely imaginable. While the first Neanderthal fossils were compared with apes, biologists of the time like Thomas Huxley could see how much more similar they were to humans. In fact, the Neanderthal lineage only split from our shared common ancestor around 600 Ka (thousand years ago): vastly more recent than the oldest known stone tools, over 3 million years ago. Neanderthals were not hyper-carnivores Early theories that Neanderthals weren’t great hunters, or were stuck in a ‘Big Game Rut’, have been steadily overturned. Existing through 300,000 years of climate cycles and across western Eurasia, they adapted to a wide variety of environments and took the best of what was around them. On the podcast| British prehistory: everything you wanted to know This included hunting steppe-tundra megafauna like mammoth and woolly rhino, tracking medium-sized game like deer through woods, plus smaller species like birds, rabbits, tortoises or rockpooling for fish and crustaceans. But plants were also on the menu, from tubers like waterlily roots to seeds and fruits, some of which needed cooking. Neanderthals could innovate Images of Neanderthals as technologically unsophisticated abound, and it’s been claimed their culture barely changed through hundreds of millennia. Yet they mastered many methods for taking apart stone, with varied cultures found in different regions, and there’s also evidence of innovation through time. Blades were once thought to define H. sapiens, but Neanderthals were perfectly capable of making them too. They produced adhesives for multi-part tools, including birch tar – the first synthetic substance – and a recipe mixing pine resin and beeswax. Neanderthals also had carpentry skills, shown by finely carved spears and digging sticks, and even made shell tools. Neanderthals could talk ‘Ugg’ boots might still be fashionable, but the grunting caveman clichés are now outdated. Anatomical evidence suggests Neanderthals had vocal capabilities not so different to our own. Their voice boxes could make largely similar sounds, and strikingly, their inner ears were tuned into the same frequencies as ours: human speech. Read more | Why did Neanderthals go extinct? However, genetics suggest subtle differences. While sharing the language-linked FOXP2 gene, a protein difference means theirs didn’t function identically. What might they have talked about? Perhaps animal and plant lore, knowledge of stone and seasons, or sharing memories. Woven together, these may have become the first hearthside tales. Neanderthals were not brutish Long presented as primitive and savage, in fact the assumption that Neanderthals were by nature aggressive is not reflected in the archaeology. Hunting of big game, especially herds, must have been collaborative, and the spoils were systematically butchered and transported elsewhere to waiting mouths. Other clues come from their living sites: hearths were the centres of ‘home’, and in some places we can see groups were sharing resources between different fires. Rather than violent chimpanzees, this better matches our other closest primate relatives, bonobos. Their lives revolve around female friendships, and groups are far more open to meeting strangers. Neanderthals had aesthetics Did Neanderthal life stretch beyond bare concerns of survival, into stories, songs or art? There’s growing evidence of an aesthetic sense. Read more | 5 key facts about prehistoric cave art This includes carefully incised lines on bones with no practical explanation, and collecting unusual materials: a fossil shell in Italy was smeared with red ochre 45 Ka, as was a geode in Romania around the same age. In Spain, pigment mixes are known: yellow and red minerals with sparkly ‘fools’ gold’. Plus, linked to their broad interest in birds’ feathers and claws, traces of another pigment recipe were recently found on an eagle talon from a Croatian site dating over 100 Ka. Neanderthals are not extinct Perhaps the greatest revolution in understanding of Neanderthals is that they did not entirely vanish. Older models envisioning H. sapiens replacing Neanderthals around 40,000 years ago were overturned in 2010 by genetic evidence showing interbreeding. A decade on, things are more complicated. H. sapiens were in Eurasia well before then – Australia by 65 Ka, China at least 80 Ka, and the Near East at 180 Ka – and new DNA samples reveal multiple phases of interbreeding going back before 200 Ka. Most living people have a Neanderthal genetic legacy, and in that sense they’re less extinct than some of the earliest H. sapiens populations. Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes is a Palaeolithic archaeologist, the author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, and co-founder of Trowelblazers
The history of Shrove Tuesday: why do we eat pancakes?
As the nation digs out its frying pans, Julian Humphrys looks at some of the traditions associated with Shrove Tuesday (aka Pancake Day) – including the reason why we traditionally eat and race pancakes
Why is it called Shrove Tuesday? It comes from the word ‘shrive’, which means to give absolution after hearing confession. So Shrove Tuesday is the day when people went to confession to prepare themselves for Lent, which begins on the following day, Ash Wednesday. Why do we eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday? It was the last chance for a spot of indulgence before 40 days of fasting, and also an opportunity to use up food that couldn’t be eaten during Lent. This included eggs, fat and milk, which were made into pancakes and eaten on that day. The earliest known English recipe dates from the 15th century, although pancakes had been eaten in other countries for centuries before that. In the French-speaking world, the day is known as ‘Mardi Gras’ or ‘Fat Tuesday’. Read more | Biscuit tins, rolling pins and pastry jiggers: a brief history of baking utensils How long have we been having pancake races? A pancake race has been held in Olney in Buckinghamshire since 1445. It supposedly originated when a local woman heard the church bell while she was making pancakes and ran there, frying pan in hand. Another tradition is Westminster School’s annual Pancake Grease where students compete to grab the biggest portion of a pancake tossed over a five-metre bar. In parts of Britain children went ‘shroving’ – singing songs or reciting poetry in exchange for gifts of food. Read more about the most unusual racing contests in history Semla buns: A Swedish treat for Pancake Day A semla is a cardamom-spiced sweet bread roll filled with almond paste and cream. Semlor have been eaten since the 18th century, and enjoyed on Shrove Tuesday. Swedish king Aldolph Frederick died in 1771 apparently after eating 14 semlor – though he had just eaten a huge dinner so maybe we can’t blame it all on the buns. Try the recipe for yourself Are there any other Shrove Tuesday traditions? Two popular Shrove Tuesday activities that are mercifully no longer in vogue were cock-fighting and ‘cock-throwing’. The latter involved tethering a cockerel to a stake and pelting it to death with cudgels. Samuel Pepys describes watching it on Shrove Tuesday 1661 after eating pancakes (which he calls “fritters”), while William Hogarth illustrated it in his First Stage of Cruelty. Wasn’t football played on Shrove Tuesday? After a fashion. The 12th-century writer William FitzStephen described a “Shrovetide” ballgame near London, and many communities held traditional Shrove Tuesday games when huge crowds would battle to carry a ball from one end of a village or town to the other. Some places still do it – notably Ashbourne in Derbyshire – where the ‘goals’ are three miles apart. The game is played over two days, involves hundreds of players – and rules are minimal. Read more | Did the Earl of Sandwich invent the sandwich?
7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars
Jem Duducu, author of The Napoleonic Wars in 100 Facts, reveals seven things you might not have known about the 25 years (or so) of conflict...
What were the Napoleonic Wars? The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts that occurred from 1803 to 1815, fought between France under Napoleon and a series of coalitions of European powers. Though the Napoleonic Wars are often seen as a clash of European powers fighting for dominance over the European continent, in many ways they were also an example of a global conflict before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Napoleonic Wars are usually numbered by the coalitions that were raised against Napoleonic France between 1803 and 1815: The War of the Third Coalition, 1805–06 The War of the Fourth Coalition, 1806–07 The War of the Fifth Coalition, 1809 The War of the Sixth Coalition, 1813–14 The War of the Seventh Coalition, also known as the Hundred Days, 1815 What of the wars of the first and second coalitions? These precede the Napoleonic Wars, both being part of the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s. Read more | Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know Why did the Napoleonic Wars happen? There are many explanations, but you could consider the Napoleonic Wars to be a consequence of the French Revolutionary Wars, which concluded with the 1802 Peace of Amiens. These wars had left France in a commanding strategic position in Western Europe, “something that no other European power could tolerate, because it appeared to threaten their own strategic security”, says Michael Rapport, reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow, who spoke to us about the Napoleonic Wars on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Any peace – which occurred in 1802 through the Treaty of Amiens – was going to be really a truce.” That peace broke down in 1803. “The Peace of Amiens wasn't really honoured by either side,” he says. Neither side really trusted each other.” Who was Napoleon? The Napoleonic Wars are named after a single man – Napoleon Bonaparte. How did a young, inexperienced artillery officer from Corsica rise to such a position of military prominence, not to mention Emperor of France? It took Napoleon just six years from being a relative unknown in 1793 to taking personal rule of France through a coup d’etat in 1799, something Rapport believes that it is no small part thanks to the French Revolution itself. “What the revolution did was it unlocked careers in the army, in government and in law to talent, rather than to birth and status,” he says. “Even though he was noble and he was never barred from the officer corps, the chances of him maybe advancing really high up were probably slimmer than they would have been if it hadn't been for the French Revolution.” War itself provided opportunities. Staggering death rates among officers plus the loss of royalists created opportunities for advancement – if you were politically motivated that is (“Napoleon, initially at least – wore some Republican credentials fairly visibly,” notes Rapport.) Read more about the rise and fall of Napoleon How did the Napoleonic Wars end? In March 1814, the allied powers of the Sixth Coalition occupied Paris, prompting Napoleon’s abdication on 11 April. He was exiled to Elba, an island home to some 12,000 people just off Italy’s Tuscan coast, to live out his days as its sovereign. And that should have been the end of that. Napoleon was held in high esteem even after his abdication, and so when he and 700 of his followers escaped from Elba back to France, he quickly gained support. Among the most totemic was his former marshal turned royalist commander, Michel Ney. Sent to intercept Napoleon, Ney had promised to bring him back to Paris in an iron cage; instead he joined his army of 6,000 to Napoleon’s. So began the Hundred Days, Napoleon’s final roll of the dice. Realising that he could not sit still in Paris, lest the powers of Europe join and assault him en masse, he went on the offensive – culminating in the battle of Waterloo. Waterloo was Napoleon’s final defeat, at the hands of Britain and Prussia. He was forced to abdicate once more, and banished anew – this time he was exiled to St Helena, an East India Company possession deep in the Atlantic, where he remained until his death in 1821. How many people died during the Napoleonic Wars? Five million people died in the Napoleonic Wars between 1803 and 1815, notes Rapport. “It's an estimate, but it's the best estimate we have,” he says. “In terms of the size of the European population at the time, that is the same number, proportionately, as in the First World War.” Michael Rapport is reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow and the author of The Napoleonic Wars: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013). He was speaking to Jon Bauckham On the podcast | The Napoleonic Wars: Everything you wanted to know Seven facts about the Napoleonic Wars… The young Napoleon showed little promise The Bonapartes (Buonapartes in Italian) originated in Italy, but Napoleon was born into a branch of the family that moved to Corsica [an island in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to France]. His parents were both of minor Corsican nobility and had married young. The couple had had another son called Napoleon four years before the more famous one, but the child died in infancy. Growing up in Corsica, Napoleon’s first language was Italian, not French. However, as his family was well off (by Corsican standards), he and his brother Joseph were sent to military academies in France. Read more | What killed Napoleon Bonaparte? Napoleon did not fit in particularly well. While he did learn French, he spoke it with an accent that betrayed his roots, and he was teased for sounding like a peasant. Furthermore, the other boys came from well-connected and more affluent families, and while they were good at dancing, Napoleon’s skills lay in gardening. It was not a promising start for a boy who, at various times, dreamed of becoming an officer in the French navy or an artillery instructor in the Ottoman Empire. How different history would have been had he taken one of those routes. Aged 15, Napoleon was admitted to the elite École Militaire in Paris. This was a huge honour, which turned into a disaster when his father died of stomach cancer while Napoleon was in his first year. The young cadet was now expected to be the family’s chief source of income, while at the same time attending one of the most expensive schools in France. The situation forced him to complete the two-year course in just one, and while he came only 42nd in a class of 58, graduation meant he could become a commissioned officer just after his 16th birthday. By 1791, as war was about to break out across Europe, Napoleon, still a second lieutenant stationed in a sleepy garrison town, went on leave to see his family in Corsica. This was about as unexceptional a start to a military career as can be imagined. No one could have predicted that within 10 years Napoleon would be the most feared military commander in Europe, and later would become one of the greatest generals in history. Read more | Your guide to the Seven Years' War The royal navy attacked a city France was courting Denmark and Norway in 1801, and, if they could be persuaded to join the fight, it looked like Russia might also join them. The possibility that Denmark might attack the British mainland could not be contemplated – something had to be done. Step forward Admiral Parker, who was sent to carry out some very British gunboat diplomacy (ie turn up with some warships and force a settlement). It wasn’t necessarily meant to be a shooting war. When the royal navy arrived, the Danish fleet was moored against the gun batteries and naval defences of the city, so a frontal assault would have been impossible. However, Parker’s subordinate was Vice Admiral Nelson, who was just the right mix of brilliant, brave and mad. He attacked the weaker southern end of the Danish defences, which resulted in a brutal artillery duel between land and sea. Parker lacked Nelson’s grit and, on seeing the devastating effect of close-quarter cannon fire, signalled the retreat. Nelson replied with a signal that acknowledged the order, but did nothing. Instead, he lifted his telescope to his blind eye and said to his flag-captain, Thomas Foley: “You know, Foley, I only have one eye. I have the right to be blind sometimes.” Read more | 5 facts you (probably) didn’t know about Nelson’s navy With that, he continued to press his attack. In the heat of the battle, Nelson was seen to be carefully preparing a letter for the terms of Copenhagen’s surrender – amid the roar of cannons, the screams of men and the sound of splintering wood. This forced at least one of his officers to conclude that Nelson had lost his mind, but Nelson calmly explained that if he was seen to have the time and the conditions to prepare a decent letter, it would make the Danes think they weren’t causing as much damage as they were. It was remarkable logic, and an example of the ultimate cool head under fire. The ruse worked, and Copenhagen surrendered. Remarkably, no royal navy ships were sunk; however, around 1,000–1,200 British crew were either killed or wounded. The Danes suffered 50 per cent more casualties and lost three ships, including their flagship, the Dannebrog, when it exploded. After this short but bloody encounter, the two nations agreed an armistice. Following this, Parker sailed the fleet to Sweden in an attempt to persuade it to break away from the armed neutrality league that had been set up in the Baltic, but the Swedes declined his offer. As a result of Parker’s wavering at Copenhagen, followed by his rather lacklustre display in Sweden, he was relieved of duty, and Nelson was promoted to vice-admiral. All sides understood the ‘propaganda war’ The Napoleonic Wars were not the first to use the medium of print for propaganda purposes – The Times, for example, started in 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, was not above bias. But this particular era of conflict excelled at printing scurrilous opinions and defamatory cartoons. The leaders of the age knew the power of the press. As Napoleon once said: “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” However, it wasn’t just opinion pieces that influenced; imagery was often more powerful and lingered longer. Napoleon understood this, and became known for self-aggrandisement. The famous painting of him crossing the Alps (painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805), for example, shows a strongly idealised view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps. Napoleon also made sure his coronation as emperor was immortalised in oil paintings, and both he and his wife, Josephine, commissioned regal portraits of themselves in their splendid imperial robes. While Napoleon didn’t plan his own tomb, it continued the themes of power and supremacy – this time with Napoleon as an Adonis; a god among men. Brilliant general he assuredly was, but physically Napoleon was a little on the pudgy side, and had a crooked nose. Napoleon had the twin advantages of being both a general and an absolute ruler; he was able to dictate and control the French press. Britain did not provide its monarchs and leaders with the same benefits; it had a freer press, and parliamentary democracy meant magazines could draw witheringly satirical cartoons of friend and foe alike. For example, Napoleon’s nickname, ‘Boney’, was a British invention designed to conjure antipathy. At the time, it was thought that having some meat on your bones was a good thing; therefore, horrible old ‘Boney’ was a wraith to be feared or mocked. ‘Boney’ stood in stark contrast to the famous John Bull cartoon popularised first by British print makers. Bull was the national personification of England; a plump, down-to-earth patriot and beer lover. Napoleon is often portrayed as compensating for his lack of stature with comically large hats and boots. But to set the record straight, Napoleon wasn’t short. This misunderstanding arose because French measurements were different to British ones, and we now know that Napoleon was a little taller than the average man of his time (although he would probably have looked diminutive standing next to someone like the Duke of Wellington). The idea that Napoleon was short still exists to this day, all thanks to British propaganda from 200 years ago. The best way to defeat Spain was to invade Argentina By 1806, Britain had been at war almost constantly for well over a decade. Its continental allies were continually being humbled by French armies, and Britain’s own contributions to the war thus far had been mainly naval victories. However, William Pitt and Sir Home Riggs Popham (the British royal naval commander) had been mulling over for a year or so ideas to weaken France’s main ally, Spain. Spain’s South American empire was largely undefended. Trying to resist a British invasion there would take Spanish troops away from the resources that Napoleon could use in Europe. So, in short, it was decided (by Popham, without authorisation) that the best way to win a war against France in Europe was to invade Argentina in South America. These operations were referred to as the British invasions of the Río de la Plata. Britain achieved early success when it captured Buenos Aires – one of the key cities in the area – and held it for more than a month. When the invaders were ejected, it wasn’t thanks to the arrival of Spanish troops, but an uprising of the local population. In 1807, the British responded by sending a larger invasion force – this time successfully storming Montevideo, where they stayed for a few months just to prove a point. Shortly afterwards, the British sent a third force back to Buenos Aires, but after heavy fighting with a combined force of Spanish soldiers standing side-by-side with the local militia, they were pushed back and suffered more than 50 per cent casualties. The British lost this campaign. It was an ambitious plan that had assumed resistance could only be achieved by Spanish regular troops. In fact, it was the bravery of the locals that saved Río de la Plata from becoming part of the British empire. The repercussions of this attempted invasion were unforeseen by everyone. The Spanish were, at first, overjoyed that their colonies had resisted so resolutely. However, those same colonies felt their actions had earned them the right to be considered the equal of their colonial masters in Spain. The Spanish were, at this time, also having serious trouble with a French invasion of their own country, so could do little. By 1810, the South American colonies felt confident enough to carry out their own revolution (the May Revolution), which removed the Spanish Viceroy and set up a local government for the first time. This led, in July 1816, to the declaration of independence for the United Provinces of South America, which later became known as Argentina. At the time, some of the ex-Spanish colonies were at war with each other but, overall, shrugging off the old colonial overlord was seen as beneficial. The irony then was that while Britain lost the campaign, it achieved its goals of weakening Spain and distracting Spanish priorities and forces. Another irony is that today in Argentina, Britain’s actions of 1806–7 are seen as the trigger for independence, and are widely considered to have been a good thing. Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition to end The story of the Spanish Inquisition [a tribunal established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms] is a long and complex one. However, the first area to come under its scrutiny was in 12th-century France. The more notorious version of these religious enquiries into potential heretics or apostates started in Spain in the late 15th century, and never really went away until the 19th century. The French Revolution (which began in 1789) sparked real concerns in Spain. King Charles IV worried about how his people might regard the wealth and power not only of the monarchy, but also of the church. With this in mind, he took steps to clip the wings of the Spanish Inquisition. A number of the monolithic Catholic organisations were anathema to the enlightenment ideals of revolutionary France, and there were a number of times Napoleon (and others) dismantled century old ‘Holy Cows’ in the name of modernity. Read more | What triggered the French Revolution? When the French invaded Malta they had ended the Hospitallers; a religious organisation founded in the Middle Ages. Napoleon also abolished another ancient organisation, the Holy Roman Empire, the argument being that it too was a remnant of a theocratic past incompatible with a new Europe. So it should therefore come as little surprise that once the French invaded Spain, it was Joseph Bonaparte who tried to abolish the Spanish Inquisition once and for all. However, Bonaparte was king of Spain from 1808 to 1813, which wasn't long enough to overthrow all the old ways. Consequently, by 1814 the inquisition was back in business. The last person to be killed by the Spanish Inquisition was a teacher in 1826, for suggesting so-called heretical ideas. The inquisition was officially abolished in 1834. The showdown at Waterloo was delayed due to rain With the battles of Quatre Bras and Ligny fought on 16 June 1815, and all the main forces still in roughly the same area, it would have been safe to assume that the next clash would be on the 17th. However, there were surprises in store for everyone. First of all, Marshall Ney, Napoleon’s right-hand man returned to Quatre Bras to fight the second round of this encounter… except that when he got there, he found that Wellington had largely moved on. The challenge then was to find the allied positions and engage. However, while a brief skirmish did take place between the British and French on the 17th, it quickly faded as the heavens opened and torrential rain lashed all the armies for hours. A year earlier, Wellington had been in this very region, and had recognised that a ridge with a reverse slope would be the perfect defensive position for a battle, should one ever take place in the area. Now was the time, and he positioned his forces both along and behind the ridge, located near the small Belgian town of Waterloo. Read more | How the French won Waterloo (or think they did) Wellington spent the night at a Waterloo inn, impatiently waiting for communication from the Prussian leader Blücher. It finally came at around 2am. After that, Wellington was wide awake and spent the rest of the night consulting with his officers and sending out orders. Blücher’s message had been delayed while he argued with his subordinate, Gneisenau, about how their forces could effectively work with Wellington’s. Blücher knew that a concentration of troops was the best bet to beat Napoleon; however, Gneisenau distrusted the British. Meanwhile, Napoleon was unusually indecisive. Grouchy had not advanced as fast as he’d hoped, and in the middle of the night Napoleon was seen going for a walk. He sent ambiguous orders to Grouchy who, instead of coming to his aid, continued to advance towards Wavre. Napoleon bedded down in a farmhouse and, in the morning, had fine breakfast with his officers. When they expressed concerns about Wellington – the only major allied general Napoleon had yet to face on the battlefield – Napoleon admonished them by saying: “Just because you have all been beaten by Wellington, you think he's a good general. I tell you Wellington is a bad general; the English are bad troops, and this affair is nothing more than eating breakfast.” On the morning of 18 June, Napoleon delayed the start of battle as he waited for the ground to harden after the downpour of the previous day. This, he believed, would make it easier to reposition his artillery, and would allow better conditions for cavalry movements. He gave Ney operational command and could be seen sitting in an armchair, miles from the front line. It seems that Napoleon had been, once again, struck down with illness, and his haemorrhoids made it impossible for him to remain in the saddle for the whole day. Waterloo was not the final battle against France Conflicts are messy. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that there is no neat ending to this period of warfare. Waterloo was undeniably the most pivotal battle of this campaign, and it shattered Napoleon’s authority – less than a week after the battle, Napoleon abdicated. But the fighting had been in Belgium, and the race was now on to get to the French capital to ensure an allied army was present to oversee the dismantling of Napoleonic power and the return of Louis XVIII. Read more | What is the significance of Waterloo? The French, however, didn’t see things in quite the same way. They had around 65,000 troops in the area [25,000 others had been killed or wounded at Waterloo, and 9,000 captured], and French General Vandamme led part of that army out to meet the approaching Prussians at a small town to the south of Paris. Wellington’s forces were also on their way, so quite what Vandamme was hoping to achieve is uncertain. He might not have been able to win in the long run, but in the short term he’d be damned if he’d allow Blücher to march to the capital without a fight. The allies had come in a southerly direction because Paris’s main defences had been constructed north of the Seine. The battle was a Prussian/French affair because Vandamme chose to attack Blücher, rather than Wellington. Battle commenced on 2 July 1815 around the town of Issy and the commanding heights of Meudon. That night a council in Paris discussed whether it was time to surrender; however, it was Davout, one of Napoleon’s most loyal and talented marshals, who dug in his heels and insisted that Vandamme should try to oust the Prussians from their position. The next day the French attacked the Prussians (who by now had barricaded themselves in) with artillery fire. Then the French infantry advanced. After fierce fighting, the French were driven back, only to regroup and try to break the Prussians once more. This attempt also failed, and for the rest of the day the French alternated between pounding the Prussians with cannon fire and then surging forwards with an infantry assault. But the French never threw everything they had into any assault. Vandamme, for reasons unknown, never fully committed to the battle, and because of this the Prussians were able to hold their positions (despite high casualties). Ultimately, the French were forced to retreat back to Paris. The Prussians pursued Vandamme’s retreating men, and some forward units even clashed with the French rear guard in the Parisian suburbs. This was quickly followed by a unilateral French ceasefire, and by now, Wellington had linked up with Blücher. Allied negotiators met French representatives at the Palace of St Cloud, chosen as a relatively neutral location. It was here that Paris formally surrendered in a hastily created document now rather formally known as ‘The Convention of St Cloud’. Ironically, the palace was destroyed by German troops the next time the Prussians attacked Paris, in 1870. In summary, the Napoleonic Wars are like most of history – a swirling mass of facts, with areas that simply don’t fit into an easy narrative. But they shaped the political and cultural landscapes from Egypt to Russia and from Argentina to Belgium. Today, their legacy reverberates throughout Europe and beyond. The above facts are abridged versions taken from Jem Duducu’s The Napoleonic Wars in 100 Facts (Amberley Publishing, 2015). Find out more, and you can also follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @JemDuducu This article was first published by HistoryExtra in June 2015
Your ultimate guide to Pompeii, plus 8 fascinating facts about the ancient Roman city
After the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, the ancient Roman city of Pompeii was lost for centuries. Today, it is one of the world's most famous – and fascinating – archaeological sites. Learn more about its history from two expert historians
How and when was Pompeii destroyed? The only eyewitness account of the eruption that we have comes from Pliny the Younger (the nephew of naturalist and naval commander Pliny the Elder), via letters that he wrote 17 years after the disaster, describing the eruption of Vesuvius. And it is from him that we get a timeline of what happened during those fateful days. There had been earth tremors in the days leading up to the eruption, but no one seems to have paid much attention to them. Vesuvius had last erupted in something like 1600 BC, so when it emitted a huge plume of ash and volcanic debris into the sky, no one had any idea what was happening. Over the next 18 hours or so, pumice stones rained down from the cloud, filling the streets and houses, and by the next morning, the huge column of ash had collapsed, and incredibly fast-moving clouds of stone and ash and gases (known as pyroclastic surges) started racing down the sides of Vesuvius at speeds of 200mph and temperatures of 300°C. Anyone who hadn’t left Pompeii by that point would have had no hope of survival, and it is this that finally buried and destroyed the city. View oEmbed on the source website The precise date of the eruption is harder to pin down and there is still much debate. What we have of Pliny’s original letters are various copies created by scribes in the medieval period. The best surviving copy gives the date of the eruption as 24 August, and this is the date that is most often used. But there are other copies that cite different dates: 24 October, 20 November and 3 December are among other dates given. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/08/GettyImages527432796-727a4b8-e1692114305171.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The bones of a Pompeiian, preserved under the volcanic debris. The skeletons of around 1,200 victims have been unearthed to date (Photo by In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)" title="The bones of a Pompeiian, preserved under the volcanic debris. The skeletons of around 1,200 victims have been unearthed to date (Photo by In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images)" /> In fact, the archaeological evidence suggests that the eruption took place later in the year. Carbonised pomegranates – a fruit that ripens in the autumn – have been found in both Pompeii and at Oplontis, just outside the city, and there is evidence of grape pressing taking place, an activity that occurred later in the year. So, it’s likely that the eruption happened later than August, but we simply don’t know for sure, other than that it happened in AD 79. A quick guide to Pompeii Where is Pompeii? Pompeii is on the west coast of Italy near modern-day Naples What was the volcano, and when did the eruption bury Pompeii? Mount Vesuvius erupted in August AD 79 How many died at Pompeii? Almost certainly thousands were killed, though the true figure will never be known How many people died as a result of the eruption? This is another question that is difficult to answer accurately. So far, around 1,200 skeletons have been found, and of those, 100 or so have been made into plaster casts. It’s thought that the city’s population was probably around 10,000–15,000 at the time of the eruption, so, considering the 1,200 bodies we do have and the fact that around a third of Pompeii is yet to be excavated, it does seem that a lot of people did manage to get away. Do we know anything about the survivors of Pompeii? A few years ago, a study was carried out to try and match family names that were distinctive to Pompeii and Herculaneum and see if these names showed up elsewhere after AD 79. It was by no means a foolproof method, but it is the best attempt to date to try and trace survivors of the eruption. What the study found was that those who did escape didn’t go very far. There are name correlations in Cumae, just west of Naples, and a lot of people seem to have settled in the Bay of Naples area – only around 30 miles from Pompeii. Today it’s a different story: when I lived in Pompeii, I received letters telling me that in the event of an eruption, residents would be transported up to Genoa, in the north of Italy. What happened in terms of rescue work after the disaster? We know from some of the sources that the new Roman emperor, Titus, sent commissioners to Pompeii to redistribute the land of those who had died without heirs to survivors who had lost everything. At that point, there was no hope of finding anyone alive in the city, but they seem to have had a plan for what happened next. In his 80-book Roman History (written between AD 211-233), the historian Cassius Dio stated that Titus visited the disaster site in person, much like a president or prime minister might do today, distributing money and showing great compassion to the victims of the eruption. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/08/KGR93Y-20d5406-e1692114448331.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A portion of ceramic fragments excavated at Pompeii. Many of the items demonstrate a high level of craftsmanship (Photo by Roy Conchie/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A portion of ceramic fragments excavated at Pompeii. Many of the items demonstrate a high level of craftsmanship (Photo by Roy Conchie/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> We don’t have any official evidence to suggest that they dug for bodies or survivors, but we can see that people did return to the site and tunnelled into their houses, probably to retrieve possessions. Excavations at Pompeii have revealed piles of goods, such as silverware, stashed in corners of rooms – probably gathered into one place to make it easier to return and collect them later. On one house there is an inscription that reads Domus Pertusa, which roughly translates to ‘house brought out’. This could suggest that somebody had come back for their items, or that people were routinely going through houses to try and rob people of their possessions. The Domus Pertusa label could be saying, ‘I’ve taken all there is from this one; don’t bother going in’. How important was Pompeii before the eruption? I was brought up with the idea that Pompeii was just another run-of-the mill Roman town. But the more I’ve worked there and the more I’ve travelled around the former Roman empire, the more I think it was pretty special. It was a working town, for sure. But the level of craftsmanship of the possessions we’ve found, from pots and pans to mosaics, and the overall infrastructure, make me think it was more than your average working town. Pompeii, Herculaneum and the other sites destroyed in AD 79 give us an incredible window into daily life and the sorts of trades in place there. We have launderettes, shops, bars, and the sorts of objects in those places, as well as houses with their own workshops for glass and metal making, for example. And we can see glimpses of the lives of enslaved people in the town; people who were usually ‘invisible’ but whose shackles have survived. And it’s all on a huge scale and helps us understand life in the first century AD across all social classes. So, the importance of Pompeii for historians is unquestionable, but as to whether we would know about the town had the eruption not happened is a question that can’t be answered really. Were the lives of Pompeii’s women any different to those in, say, Rome? I don’t think so. I think the role of Roman women is often misunderstood anyway; if you were to just read the sources, you would get the impression that they were either promiscuous or domestic goddesses. But in fact, when you scratch the surface, we can see that women were working. If they ran a household, they needed to be literate and have numeracy skills in order to manage the house accounts. And some did own their own businesses. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/08/GettyImages152187831-bc5d41e-e1692114138385.jpg" width="620" height="415" alt="The lavish home of Julia Felix. In AD 62 the businesswoman converted parts of the property into shops and apartments for fellow locals to rent (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)" title="The lavish home of Julia Felix. In AD 62 the businesswoman converted parts of the property into shops and apartments for fellow locals to rent (Photo by Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)" /> One Pompeiian woman we do know about was Julia Felix, a freed woman who was not a member of the elite. She bought two insular blocks, which usually contain around nine or 10 houses, and joined them together – something that was unheard of – to make one of the largest properties in Pompeii. I really like her – she seems to have been a savvy entrepreneur without the backing of family money. In AD 62, probably after the earthquake believed to have hit Pompeii that year, she advertised on the side of her building for respectable people to rent a series of shops and upstairs apartments in her property. So, she obviously needed to make money and took it upon herself to start a business renting out her own property. And this is quite unusual, as Roman law usually stated that women needed a guardian or a man to be involved. Did the memory of Pompeii fade after the eruption? I don’t think it ever vanished from memory. There’s a map known as the Peutinger Table that is a 12th-century copy of a fourth-century AD Roman map, and on it are the names of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis (a possible imperial villa between Herculaneum and Pompeii) and Stabiae, which is further round the coast. All these names were still appearing 300 years after the eruption – people might not have known their exact location, but they would have known the area. How much more is there still to discover at Pompeii? There is still a third of the city – 22 hectares – that is still completely buried by volcanic material. Recently, work has been taking place on the edge of this unexcavated area, but there would never be another massive excavation to uncover the buried third without a very good cause for conservation; we need to manage what we already have on display. Pompeii went through a bad period of neglect, but, thanks to a huge sum of money from the EU, a massive conservation campaign is now underway to try to look after what has been excavated and to leave that remaining third for future generations. Ideas of what we can learn from the site have changed a lot since the site’s rediscovery in 1748. We’re now looking at the DNA of the skeletons, as well as analysing food residue in ceramic vessels found in many of the city’s bars. For years, it was thought that only dried food was kept in these pots, but a couple of years ago bones were discovered, indicating that hot foods – a pork and fish stew – were being served in bars, which was against Roman law. Fifty years ago, we might not have had the technology to have found this sort of thing out, so to leave a third of the city unexcavated is a good thing; it allows future generations with new technologies to ask more probing questions. So, although I’m dying to know what’s beneath the last section, I’m okay with it not being dug in my lifetime. Sophie Hay is an archaeologist specialising in Pompeii. She is currently writing a book on female archaeologists involved in the city’s excavations, as well as working for the Archaeological Park of Pompeii This article was first published in the October 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed 8 facts you probably didn't know about Pompeii Here, Roman historian and archaeologist Dr Joanne Berry shares eight lesser-known facts about the city on the west coast of Italy near modern-day Naples… Pompeii is not frozen in time, nor is it a perfect time-capsule The eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 caused vast damage – fires were started, rooftops were swept away, columns collapsed. Most of the inhabitants of the town escaped into the surrounding countryside (although we have no idea how many of those died there). They took with them small valuables, like coins and jewellery, and lamps. Organic materials, like sheets, blankets, clothes, curtains, were mostly destroyed. In the years and centuries after the eruption, salvagers explored Pompeii, tunnelling through walls and removing valuable objects. The earliest formal excavations in the 18th century were little more than treasure-hunting exercises, which means that records of finds are poor or non-existent. There is also evidence that some finds, such as wall-paintings and pottery, were deliberately destroyed by the excavators because they were not considered to be of high enough quality! All these factors make Pompeii a challenging site to study – much like most other archaeological sites. What was life like for the Romans who lived in Pompeii, pre-eruption? Not that different from our own, as Mary Beard reveals in her A to Z of life in the ancient town of Pompeii… Pompeii resembled a giant building site It is commonly known that in AD 63 a massive earthquake caused major damage in the town. Scholars now agree, however, that this was merely one in a series of earthquakes that shook Pompeii and the surrounding area in the years before AD 79, when Vesuvius erupted. It is clear that some buildings were repaired several times in this period. In fact, Pompeii must have resembled a giant building site, with reconstruction work taking place in both public buildings and private houses. In the past scholars argued that the town was abandoned by the wealthy in this period and taken over by a mercantile class. These days we see the scale of rebuilding as a sign of massive investment in the city – possibly sponsored by the emperor – by inhabitants who sought to improve their urban environment. The amphitheatre was colourfully decorated… When the amphitheatre was first excavated in 1815, a remarkable series of frescoes [mural paintings] adorned its parapet wall. There were large painted panels of wild animals, such as a bear and a bull facing off, tied together by a length of rope so that neither could escape the other, and a referee standing between two gladiators. On either side of these, smaller panels depicted winged victories, or candelabra-lit spaces. The frescoes probably were painted on the podium wall in the period immediately before the eruption. Within a few months of their excavation, however, they had been completely destroyed by frost, leaving no traces of their presence that can be seen by visitors today. Luckily for us, drawings had been made of them when they were excavated, so we have some idea of the original colourful decoration of the amphitheatre. … as was the House of Julia Felix A series of frescos were found in the atrium of the Praedium [aka ’Estate] of Julia Felix that seem to depict scenes of everyday life in the forum (the political centre of the Roman city). Twelve fragments of these frescoes survive: one depicts a beggar being offered something by a woman wearing a green tunic, and another shows a boy being whipped – this sometimes has been considered evidence of the presence of a school in the forum area. Other fragments show a man cleaning another man’s shoes, a cobbler, merchants displaying their wares to two women, and figures selling bread, fruit and vegetables, and what look like socks. In one scene a customer holds the hand of a child. Horses, mules, and carts, and possibly a chariot can be identified in other scenes In one important fragment, a banner has been strung from two equestrian statues and four male figures have stopped to read it, or to have it read to them (since we don’t know for sure how many people in Pompeii could read) All these scenes remind us that the Forum was not just the political centre of the Roman city – it was its economic and social heart too. Gladiators in Ancient Rome: how did they live and die? The Cult of Isis was particularly popular at Pompeii In addition to the famous Temple of Isis [dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis], images and statuettes of Isis have been found in more than 20 houses, often alongside figurines of more traditional Roman gods and goddesses. Listen | Daisy Dunn revisits the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and considers the history that was preserved at Pompeii and Herculaneum Although Roman writers were suspicious of the Cult of Isis, which they thought threatened traditional Roman values like honour and duty to the state the Temple of Isis at Pompeii had existed at Pompeii for around 200 years before the eruption of AD 79 – which means that the Cult had a long and established following at Pompeii. Followers of Isis believed that she offered the possibility of life after death, but she was also patron goddess of sailors. This surely explains her popularity at Pompeii, which was located by the sea. The Cult of Isis attracted women, freedmen, and slaves to its ranks, but its rites and ceremonies remain unknown. 6 women who changed the course of Roman history Despite what you might read, there is only one securely identified brothel (or ‘Lupanar’) at Pompeii It is located on a narrow, winding street in the centre of the town, and it is today one of the most visited tourist attractions in the excavations. We know it was a brothel from its layout (it is divided into cubicles, each with a masonry bed), erotic wall paintings, and multiple explicit graffiti that list sexual acts and prices. In bed with the Romans: a brief history of sex in Ancient Rome Scholars have suggested that other ‘brothels’ were located in houses with erotic wall paintings, but in actual fact erotic paintings are ubiquitous at Pompeii and are not associated with the sale of sex. This does not mean that prostitution only took place in the Lupanar, however. Advertisements for prostitutes have been found in the streets of tombs that surround the town, and bars probably sold sex as well as food and wine. The plastercasts of the victims of the eruption are the most famous artefacts from Pompeii. But did you know that archaeologists also make plastercasts of root cavities in gardens to determine what flowers, fruits and vegetables were being grown in AD 79? This technique was first pioneered by Wilhelmina Jashemski (1910–2007), an American archaeologist who studied every garden in Pompeii. One large garden was found to be a vineyard – there were 2,014 root cavities that were found to have been made by vines, and additional cavities from the wooden stakes that supported these plants. The vineyard had been divided into four parts by intersecting paths, and trees had been growing along the paths and at intervals through the vineyard. Vegetables seem to have been grown under the vines too. Other gardens grew vines on a smaller scale, and vegetables and fruit and nut trees were common. Although some of the produce must have been consumed by the inhabitants of the houses concerned, it is likely that much was destined for sale at market. Waiting for a legal case to be heard in the Basilicain the Forum of Pompeii must have been long and boring, if the evidence of nearly 200 scribblings found on its walls is anything to go by Some people simply scratched their names and the date, just like modern graffiti. Others used this public venue (used for law courts, administration and business transactions) to vent their bile (‘Chios, I hope your piles irritate you so they burn like they’ve never burned before!’) or make accusations (‘Lucilla was making money from her body’, and ‘Virgula to her bloke Tertius: you’re a dirty old man!’). The 8 bloodiest Roman emperors in history What did they wear in Ancient Rome? Some graffiti were started in one hand, but finished in another: a slave called Agatho starts to ask something of the goddess Venus; his sentence is finished by someone else who writes ‘I ask that he perish’. Some of those waiting seem to have resorted to playing games: a remarkable graffito records the names of three men playing ‘Trigon’, a game that involved players throwing multiple balls at each other. Another man is designated as score-keeper, and one is tasked with fetching the balls. Clearly the Basilica was a lively spot! Dr Joanne Berry is a lecturer in ancient history at Swansea University. She is author of The Complete Pompeii (Thames and Hudson, 2007, reprinted in paperbook in 2012), co-author of The Complete Roman Legions (Thames and Hudson Ltd, 2015) and the founder of Blogging Pompeii, a news and discussion site for Pompeii and the archaeological sites of the Bay of Naples. The above facts were first published by HistoryExtra in 2016
Who was Cleopatra? Her life, her love affairs and her children, plus 6 little-known facts
Cleopatra is one of the best-known women in history, famed for her supposed beauty and intellect, and her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Explore her incredible life, her quest her for power and her untimely end
Cleopatra VII: a biography Born: c69 BC Died: 30 BC Reigned: She assumed control of Egypt in 51 BC after the death of her father, Ptolemy XII, intially co-ruling with her brother XIII. Her reign ended with her death in 30 BC. Known for: Being the last pharaoh of Egypt, being a fabled beauty, her love affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, and – alongside Mark Antony – waging a war on Rome, which she ultimately lost. Outside Europe, in Africa and in Islamic tradition, she was remembered very differently. Arab writers refer to her as a scholar, and 400 years after her death a cult statue of Cleopatra was being honoured at Philae, a religious centre that also attracted pilgrims from further south, outside Egypt. Cause of death: Took her own life, possibly with poison. Legend has it that she encouraged a snake to bite her. Cleopatra VII: Ancient Egypt’s most famous daughter, and its last active Pharaoh. A woman immortalised in film, on canvas and in print. An enigmatic heroine to whom William Shakespeare devoted one of his greatest tragedies. Her story is one that has been retold throughout history – full of romance and love, riches and betrayal. But beneath the gold and glamour lies a far darker tale of sibling rivalry taken to the extreme, and a thirst for power that would change the course of history. Born c69 BC, Cleopatra was the third of a possible six children, all of whom shared a common father, Ptolemy XII. The Ptolemaic dynasty, a Macedonian-Greek royal family that had ties to Alexander the Great, had ruled Egypt since 305 BC. Traditionally male rulers took the name Ptolemy, while Ptolemaic Queens were usually named Cleopatra, Arsinoë or Berenice. Great reputations Member exclusive | In our podcast series, expert historians discuss the contested reputations of key historical figures, charting the lives and afterlives of Cleopatra, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emmeline Pankhurst and more… Listen to all episodes now How did Cleopatra become queen? For Cleopatra, life as a royal daughter was one of luxury. The Egyptian capital Alexandria, the seat of Ptolemaic power, was a thriving cultural centre, attracting scholars, artists and philosophers from all over the world. It was also home to the great Pharos of Alexandria – the 137-metre-tall lighthouse that towered over the city and one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Cleopatra’s first taste of power came at the tender age of 14, when she was made co-regent with her father, following his restoration to the throne after three years in exile, albeit with limited powers. Ptolemy XII’s return to the throne had cost Cleopatra’s elder sister, Berenice – who had seized power in his absence – her life. Quiz | How much do you know about Cleopatra? There may have been a further elder sister, Cleopatra VI Tryphaena, but she too had died by this point. All of this meant that it was 18-year-old Cleopatra who became co-regent with her brother, Ptolemy XIII (aged ten), when her father died in March 51 BC. In true pharaonic tradition, which aimed to keep the royal bloodline as pure as possible, Cleopatra married her younger brother and co-ruler, but it soon became clear that she had no intention of sharing power with him. Within months, Ptolemy XIII’s name had been dropped from official documents and Cleopatra’s face appeared alone on coins. Cleopatra: what is the real legacy of the last pharaoh? For more than 2,000 years Cleopatra VII, final ruler of Egypt's Ptolemaic dynasty, has been portrayed as a manipulative but tragic beauty. Yet, as Joann Fletcher reveals, such simplistic portrayals obscure her true legacy as a strong, politically astute monarch... Cleopatra is often portrayed by Hollywood as a glamorous femme fatale. Mary Hamer argues that most of what we think we know about Cleopatra is merely the echo of Roman propaganda. Here, she reveals six lesser-know facts about the Egyptian ruler… Cleopatra made an ally of Julius Caesar, who helped to establish her on the throne She then invited him to join her on a voyage up the Nile, and when she subsequently gave birth to a son, she named the baby Caesarion – ‘little Caesar’. In Rome this caused a scandal. This was, firstly, because Egypt and its pleasure-loving culture were despised as decadent. But it was also because Caesar had no other sons – though he was married to Calpurnia, and had had two wives before her – and he had just made himself the most powerful man in Rome. Elite Romans were meant to share power, but Caesar seemed to want to be supreme, like a monarch. It was a doubly unbearable prospect: Caesarion, an Egyptian, just might grow up to claim to rule over Rome as Caesar’s heir. Fantasies about Cleopatra’s beauty are just that Plutarch, the Greek biographer of Mark Antony, claimed it wasn’t so much her looks that were so compelling, but her conversation and her intelligence. Cleopatra took control of the way she appeared, coming across differently according to political need. For example, at ceremonial events she would appear dressed as the goddess Isis: it was common for Egyptian rulers to identify themselves with an established deity. On her coins minted in Egypt, meanwhile, she chose to be shown with her father’s strong jaw line, to emphasise her inherited right to rule. Sculptures don’t give us much of a clue to her looks either: there are two or three heads in the classical style, but also a number of full-length statues in Egyptian style, and her appearance in these is quite different. Read more | What did Cleopatra really look like? Cleopatra was living in Rome, as the mistress of Julius Caesar, at the time that he was assassinated Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC meant Cleopatra herself was in danger, so she left at once. With her little son, Caesarion, she had been living in a palace of her own on the other side of the river Tiber from Caesar’s household (though it is likely she hadn’t taken up permanent residence there, but returned on regular visits from Egypt). Not surprisingly, Cleopatra had been much disliked in a city that had got rid of its kings, for she’d insisted on being addressed as ‘queen’. It can’t have helped that to honour her, Caesar had placed a statue of Cleopatra covered in gold in the temple of Venus Genetrix – the goddess who brings forth life, who was held in high regard by his family. Read more | 8 ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses that you (probably) didn’t know about Cleopatra was a mother as well as the ruler of Egypt She had Caesarion, her eldest son, represented on the temple wall at Dendera alongside her, as sharing her rule. After her death, the Roman emperor Augustus lured Caesarion back with promises of power, only to have him killed. He was aged 16 or 17, though some sources say he was as young as 14. Mark Antony was the father of Cleopatra’s other children, Ptolemy Philadelphus and the twins, Cleopatra Selene and Alexander Helios. The twins were aged 10 and Ptolemy six when their mother died. They were taken to Rome and treated well in the household of Mark Antony’s widow, Octavia, where they were educated. 10 things you (probably) didn't know about ancient Egypt The adult Cleopatra Selene was married to Juba, a minor king, and sent to rule with him over Mauretania. She gave birth to another Ptolemy – Cleopatra’s only known grandchild. He died in adulthood by order of his cousin, Caligula, so none of Cleopatra’s descendants lived to inherit Egypt. When we refer to the eighth month as ‘August’, we are celebrating the defeat and death of Cleopatra Augustus founded his reign on the defeat of Cleopatra. When he had the chance to have a month named in his own honour, instead of choosing September – the month of his birth – he chose the eighth month, in which Cleopatra died, to create a yearly reminder of her defeat. Augustus would have liked to lead Cleopatra as a captive through Rome, as other generals did with their prisoners, in the formal triumphs that celebrated their victories. But she killed herself to prevent that. Cleopatra didn’t die for love. Like Mark Antony, who killed himself because there was no longer a place of honour for him in the world, Cleopatra chose to die rather than suffer the violence of being paraded, shamed and helpless, through Rome. Augustus had to make do with an image of her that was carried through the streets instead. Cleopatra’s name was Greek, but it doesn’t mean that she was Cleopatra’s family was descended from the Macedonian general Ptolemy, who had picked up Egypt in the shareout after Alexander died. But 250 years then passed before Cleopatra was born – 12 generations, with all their love affairs and secret assignations. Today we know that at least one child in 10 is not attributed to their correct biological father – “Momma’s baby, Poppa’s maybe”, as they say. Egypt’s population included people of many different ethnicities, and naturally that included Africans, since Egypt was a part of Africa. So it’s not at all unlikely that long before Cleopatra was born, her Greek heritage had become mixed with other strains. And since the identity of her own grandmother is unknown, it is foolish to think that we’re sure of her racial identity. Mary Hamer is the author of Signs of Cleopatra: Reading an Icon Historically (Liverpool University Press, 2008) What are the key moments in Cleopatra's reign? 51 BC | Ptolemy XII dies Having recovered his throne with Roman help in c55 BC, Ptolemy XII dies, leaving Egypt with considerable debts. Before his death, he declares that Cleopatra and Ptolemy XIII are to co-rule. 48 BC | Cleopatra seduces Julius Caesar Desperate to enlist Rome’s help to restore her to the throne, the banished Cleopatra smuggles herself into the presence of Julius Caesar, allegedly being delivered to him in a bed-sack. Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony: how the last pharaoh’s love affairs shaped Ancient Egypt’s fate Explore Cleopatra's relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony – and why they had such fundamental consequences for both Egypt and Rome... 47 BC | Caesar’s son is born Cleopatra gives birth to her first child, whom she names Ptolemy Caesar – known as Caesarion. Although named after his father, Caesarion’s claim to Rome is never acknowledged by Julius Caesar. 41 BC | Cleopatra meets Mark Antony After initially refusing Roman General Mark Antony’s requests for a meeting, Cleopatra travels to Tarsus where the two meet for the first time. Antony is keen to secure Egypt’s financial help with his military campaigns. He is immediately smitten with the Egyptian Queen’s charm and beauty. 40 BC | Cleopatra bears twins Cleopatra gives birth to twins, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, fathered by Mark Antony. After Cleopatra’s surrender and suicide in 31 BC, the pair are captured by Octavian and paraded through Rome in gold chains, behind an effigy of their mother. 37 BC | The lovers are married After separating from his wife Octavia (sister of Octavian), Antony meets Cleopatra in Syria and the pair are said to have married. A third child, Ptolemy Philadelphus, is born the following year. Read more | Antony and Cleopatra, and 6 more of the best couples in history 33 BC | A crisis looms Relations between Octavian and Antony reached crisis point in 33 BC, when the Roman Senate declared war on Egypt. 30 BC | Mark Antony is defeated Following humiliating defeat at the battle of Actium by Octavian (later Augustus) and a subsequent battle in Alexandria, Mark Antony attempts suicide. He is brought to Cleopatra’s hiding place where he soon dies. 30 BC | Cleopatra takes her own life Unable to contemplate life as a prisoner of Rome, and without the protection of her Roman lover, Cleopatra takes her own life. According to legend, she is bitten by a poisonous snake, which kills her. The battle of Actium, 31 BC: the beginning of the end for Mark Antony and Cleopatra Military historian Julian Humphrys explains how this naval clash off the Greek coast presaged both the end of the Roman Republic and the deaths of one history’s most famous couples... This article was first published on HistoryExtra in April 2015 and has been updated with content published in BBC History Revealed in 2014
A brief history of International Women's Day: what is it and why do we celebrate it?
International Women’s Day has existed in various forms across the world for more than 100 years. Here's a brief guide to the history of the day, which takes place annually on 8 March
Everything you need to know ahead of International Women's Day 2023... What is International Women’s Day and when does it take place? Taking place on 8 March every year, International Women’s Day is a global celebration of women and their achievements. It is a day that seeks to raise awareness of issues affecting women around the world, highlighting initiatives and campaigns focused on improving women’s lives and increasing gender parity (equality between men and women). According to the official website, the main aims of International Women’s Day are to “celebrate achievements; raise awareness about women’s equality; lobby for accelerated gender parity and fundraise for female-focused charities”. Every International Women’s Day since 1996 has had a theme. The first International Women's Day theme was about “celebrating the past, planning the future”. For International Women's Day 2022, the theme is #BreakTheBias – the idea being to work towards a "gender equal world" that is "free of bias, stereotypes, and discrimination". 20 inspirational quotes from women through history The official colours associated with International Women’s Day harken back to the women’s suffrage movement in Britain. They are: purple, which represents justice and dignity; green, which represents hope; and white, which symbolises purity (the latter being a somewhat controversial concept due to its associations with virginity). The Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) used these colours in their campaigning in the UK in 1908. Activist Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence (1867–1954), editor of Votes for Women, a weekly newspaper, explained the choices as follows: “Purple, as everyone knows is the royal colour, it stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom and dignity… white stands for purity in private and public life… green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring.”] When did International Women’s Day start? International Women’s Day has existed in various forms across the world for more than 100 years. It developed from a range of different labour and social justice movements to eventually become an annual event recognised by the UN. A National Woman’s Day (NWD) was marked in the United States on 28 February 1909, but it wasn’t until 1911 that the first International Women’s Day took place (with Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland taking part). In 1975, the event was made ‘official’ by through recognition by the United Nations (UN). 5 women's rights activists you might not know about Who was the brains behind it all? In many ways it was a collaborative effort – the result of numerous movements and activities. But if we want to be more specific, it was a woman named Clara Zetkin (Leader of the 'Women's Office' for the Social Democratic Party in Germany) who was the first to propose the idea of an International Women’s Day. At a conference in Copenhagen of more than 100 working women from different countries, she suggested that every country celebrate a women’s day on the same date each year. Her proposal was met with unanimous approval – and thus International Women’s Day as we know it today was established. International Women’s Day hasn’t always been celebrated on 8 March. This date came about as a result of a wartime strike by women in Russia in 1917, which began on Thursday 23 February (and corresponds to 8 March in the Gregorian calendar). Rachel Dinning is the digital section editor at HistoryExtra
14 surprising facts about the history of medicine
How did people in the past treat illness, injury and disease? What medicines did they use? Here, Caroline Rance shares 14 facts from the long and often shocking history of medicine – from the first general anaesthetic to early caesareans and medicinal leeches…
How did people in the past treat illness, injury and disease? What medicines did they use? Here are 14 facts from medicine’s long and often shocking history – from the first general anaesthetic to early caesareans and medicinal leeches… Some of the earliest named doctors were women Saqqara is a huge archaeological site about 20 miles south of present-day Cairo. Five millennia ago it was the necropolis for the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis, and remains home to one of the oldest surviving buildings in the world – the step pyramid of Djoser. A nearby tomb reveals the image of Merit Ptah, the first female doctor known by name. She lived in approximately 2,700 BC and hieroglyphs on the tomb describe her as ‘the Chief Physician’. That's pretty much all that's known about her career, but the inscription reveals that it was possible for women to hold high-status medical roles in Ancient Egypt. Some 200 years later another doctor, Peseshet, was immortalised on a monument in the tomb of her son, Akhet-Hetep (aka Akhethetep), a high priest. Peseshet held the title ‘overseer of female physicians’, suggesting that women doctors weren't just occasional one-offs. Peseshet herself was either one of them or a director responsible for their organisation and training. Although the barriers of time and interpretation make it difficult to reconstruct the day-to-day practice of Merit Ptah and Peseshet, female doctors appear to have been a respected part of ancient Egyptian society. Read more | 9 weird medieval medicines Cataract surgery was possible in the sixth century BC One of the oldest known medical textbooks is the Sushruta Samhita, written in Sanskrit in India. Its exact date is tentative, as no original version survives and it is only known from later copies, but the current consensus is that it was written in around 600 BC. Sushruta is thought to have been a physician and teacher working in the North Indian city of Benares (now Varanasi in the state of Uttar Pradesh). His Samhita – a compilation of knowledge – provides detailed information on medicine, surgery, pharmacology and patient management. Sushruta advises his students that however well read they are, they are not competent to treat disease until they have practical experience. Surgical incisions were to be tried out on the skin of fruits, while carefully extracting fruit seeds enabled the student to develop the skill of removing foreign bodies from flesh. They also practised on dead animals and on leather bags filled with water, before being let loose on real patients. Quiz | How much do you know about the history of disease? Among its many surgical descriptions, the Sushruta Samhita documents cataract surgery. The patient had to look at the tip of his or her nose while the surgeon, holding the eyelids apart with thumb and index finger, used a needle-like instrument to pierce the eyeball from the side. It was then sprinkled with breast milk and the outside of the eye bathed with a herbal medication. The surgeon used the instrument to scrape out the clouded lens until the eye “assumed the glossiness of a resplendent cloudless sun”. During recovery it was important for the patient to avoiding coughing, sneezing, burping or anything else that might cause pressure in the eye. If the operation were a success, the patient would regain some useful vision, albeit unfocused. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/Roman20civilization2C20relief20portraying20ophthalmologist20examining20patient-ce51a0e.jpg" width="800" height="1000" alt="Roman civilization, a relief portraying an ophthalmologist examining a patient. (Photo By DEA/A DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)" title="Roman civilization, a relief portraying an ophthalmologist examining a patient. (Photo By DEA/A DAGLI ORTI/De Agostini/Getty Images)" /> A ‘tree of life’ tackled scurvy Trapped in ice near Stadacona (the site of present-day Quebec City) in 1536, Jacques Cartier's ships weren't going anywhere. The crews, holed up in a makeshift fort with little access to fresh food, came down with a disease so gruesome that “their mouth became stincking, their gummes so rotten, that all the flesh did fall off, even to the rootes of the teeth, which did also almost all fall out.” They had scurvy, now known to result from a deficiency of vitamin C. Cartier had no idea what to do. During his first voyage to Stadacona in 1534, Cartier had kidnapped two young men, Dom Agaya and Taignoagny, taking them back to France as proof that he had discovered a new territory. Now that they were home, the men and their community had every reason not to trust Cartier – an attitude that he interpreted as “treachery” and “knavery”. In spite of this tension, Dom Agaya showed Cartier how to make a decoction from a tree called Annedda and, although the Frenchmen wondered if it were a plot to poison them, a couple of them gave it a go and were cured within days. After that, there was such a rush for the medicine that “they were ready to kill one another”, and used up a whole large tree. Read more | The hospital experience in medieval England The identity of Annedda is not certain but there are several candidates including eastern white cedar and white spruce. Whatever it was, its nutritional benefits resulted in the sailors' complete cure. Cartier repaid Dom Agaya by kidnapping him again along with nine other people. By the time of Cartier's next voyage – to Canada in 1541 – most of the prisoners were dead, but Cartier informed their relatives that they were living in style in France. The scurvy cure did not gain widespread recognition and the disease continued to claim the lives of sailors for more than 200 years. If you want a cure for everything, try theriac Being a king in ancient times was exhaustingly dangerous; there was always someone plotting to get rid of you. So, according to legend, Mithradates (aka Mithridates) VI of Pontus (on the shores of the Black Sea in Turkey) attempted to become resistant to poisons by taking gradually increasing doses. He was also reputed to have conducted toxicological experiments on condemned prisoners, culminating in the creation of mithridate – a medicine that combined all known antidotes in one potent formula. It didn't work against Roman armies, however, and when Mithradates was defeated by the military leader Pompey in 66 BC, the recipe supposedly arrived in Rome. Emperor Nero's physician Andromachus developed it into a 64-ingredient composition, which became known as theriac. Most of the ingredients were botanical (including opium), but viper's flesh was a notable component. Read more: The horror of the early Victorian hospital In spite of early scepticism, theriac took off as a prized (and expensive) cure-all. By the 12th century Venice was the leading exporter and the substance had a high profile in European, Arabic and Chinese medicine alike. Its fortunes waned after 1745, however, when William Heberden debunked its alleged efficacy and suggested that enterprising Romans had exaggerated the Mithradates story for their own gain. Even so, theriac remained in some European pharmacopoeias until the late 19th century. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/Pharmacy20jar2C2016412C20used20by20the20Jesuits20to20store20theriac-a534904.jpg" width="700" height="1000" alt="ITALY - MARCH 29: Tin-glazed earthenware drug jar (or albarello) from Rome or Deruta, used by the Jesuits and intended for storing theriac. Theriac was an electuary (medicinal paste) used as an antidote to venomous snake bites. The flesh of the snakes themselves was an essential ingredient. Later, theriac was compounded to various formulas and was regarded as a universal antidote and panacea. The first London pharmacopoeia of 1618 contained a recipe for Theracia Andromachi (Venetian Treacle). In various towns such as Venice and Montpellier, theriac was prepared in public under official supervision to ensure the correct composition of the remedy. (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)" title="Pharmacy jar, Italian, 1641." /> General anaesthesia helped cancer patients at the beginning of the 19th century Kan Aiya, a 60-year-old woman, had lost many loved ones to breast cancer. She had seen her sisters die of the cruel disease, so when a tumour formed in her left breast she was well aware of the likely outcome. For her, however, there was a chance of survival – an operation. It was 1804 and she was in the best possible place for surgery – feudal Japan. Seishu Hanaoka (1760–1835) studied medicine in Kyoto and set up a practice in his hometown of Hirayama. He became interested in the idea of anaesthesia owing to stories that a third-century Chinese surgeon Houa T'o had developed a compound drug enabling patients to sleep through the pain. Hanaoka experimented with similar formulae and produced Tsusensan, a potent hot drink. Among other botanical ingredients it contained the plants Datura metel (aka Datura alba or ‘devil's trumpet’), monkshood and Angelica decursiva, all of which contain some potent physiologically active substances. Read more | Could modern medicine have saved Abraham Lincoln? Tsusensan had quite a kick and if you glugged it down willy-nilly you would probably die, but in the correct dosage it rendered patients unconscious for between six and 24 hours, allowing ample time for surgery. On 13 October 1804, Hanaoka excised Kan Aiya's tumour while she was under general anaesthesia, going on to operate on at least 150 more breast cancer patients and people with other conditions. Sadly, Kan Aiya is thought to have died of her disease the following year, but had been spared the agony that still characterised surgery in the West. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2016/02/GettyImages-640129478-583f5f8.jpg" width="3792" height="5500" alt="n illustrated manuscript depicting a drawing of a man's face with a red tumour by his mouth to be excised under general anaesthesia by Seishu Hanaoka, c1800. Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine. (Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)." title="n illustrated manuscript depicting a drawing of a man's face with a red tumour by his mouth to be excised under general anaesthesia by Seishu Hanaoka, c1800. Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine. (Photo via Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)." /> A ‘leech craze’ hit 19th-century Europe The medicinal leech has been in use for thousands of years, and is even today considered to be a way of restoring venous circulation after reconstructive surgery. But it was in the early 19th century that the leech really soared in popularity. Led by French physician François-Joseph-Victor Broussais (1772–1838), who postulated that all disease stemmed from local inflammation treatable by bloodletting, the ‘leech craze’ saw barrels of the creatures shipped across the globe, wild leech populations decimated almost to extinction, and the establishment of prosperous leech farms. Leeches had advantages over the common practice of bloodletting using a lancet – the loss of blood was more gradual and less of a shock for those of delicate constitution. And because Broussais's followers used leeches in place of all the other medicines at the 19th-century physician's disposal, patients were spared some harsh remedies that might otherwise have made them feel worse. In 1822, a British surgeon called Rees Price coined the term sangui-suction for leech therapy. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2016/02/CWBTTJ-632a647.jpg" width="2100" height="1656" alt="A woodcut from a 1639 treatise by Joannis Mommarti depicting a woman applying a medicinal leech to her forearm. In the early 19th century the medicinal leech soared in popularity, says Caroline Rance. (Photo by Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A woodcut from a 1639 treatise by Joannis Mommarti depicting a woman applying a medicinal leech to her forearm. In the early 19th century the medicinal leech soared in popularity, says Caroline Rance. (Photo by Everett Collection Historical/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> Ugandan surgeons developed life-saving caesarean operations In 1884, the caesarean section was not a new idea. It dated from the time of the Caesars, for a start, when Roman law required the procedure to be carried out in the event of a woman's death in childbirth. Over the centuries, reports occasionally surfaced of caesarean sections saving the lives of both mother and baby, but even after the introduction of antiseptic methods and anaesthesia, caesareans remained a dangerous last resort. So Edinburgh surgeons were surprised to hear a lecture by Robert Felkin, a missionary doctor, about a successful operation that he had witnessed in the African kingdom of Bunyoro Kitara five years earlier. The operation, Felkin reported, was carried out with the intention of saving both lives. The mother was partially anaesthetised with banana wine. The surgeon also used this wine to wash the surgical site and his own hands, suggesting awareness of the need for infection control measures. He then made a vertical incision, going through the abdominal wall and part of the uterine wall, before further dividing the uterine wall enough to take the baby out. The operation also involved removing the placenta and squeezing the uterus to promote contraction. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/The20first20surgical20treatment20of20breast20cancer20performed20under20general20anaesthetic20by20Seishu20Hanaoka-8843bd6.jpg" width="800" height="1000" alt="The first surgical treatment of breast cancer performed under general anaesthetic by Seishu Hanaoka (1760-1836) in 1804. (Out of copyright)" title="The first surgical treatment of breast cancer performed under general anaesthetic by Seishu Hanaoka (1760-1836) in 1804. (Out of copyright)" /> The means of dressing the incision was also highly developed: the surgeon used seven polished iron spikes to bring the edges of the wound together, tying them in place with bark-cloth string. He then applied a thick layer of herbal paste and covered this with a warm banana leaf held in place with a bandage. According to Felkin's account, the mother and her baby were still doing well when he left the village 11 days later. Although caesarean operations had been performed in Africa by white surgeons before this date, the procedure appeared to have been developed independently by the Banyoro people – a somewhat discomfiting realisation for a British audience familiar with colonial tales of ‘savages’. Prehistoric people needed surgery like a hole in the head In 1865, American archaeologist Ephraim George Squier left Cuzco, Peru, in possession of an ancient Mexican skull given to him by a collector. The artefact was to ignite debate in medical circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Dating from around 1400–1530 BC, the skull had a rectangular hole in its frontal lobe. Squier shared the find with the New York Academy of Medicine and with French neuroscientist Paul Broca, who showed that the hole had been deliberately made while the person was still alive. Examples of this ancient practice – trepanning – have since been found worldwide, dating back as far as 10,000 BC. It appears to have developed independently in many cultures, and as a result there's evidence of various methods: scraping the skull with a sharp flint; boring a circle of holes and prising out the resulting disc; creating a 'hashtag' shape of grooves and removing the middle. But why would people do this? Broca speculated that they were trying to let evil spirits escape from the body. It's a theory that remains popular today, but we should be aware that it rather suited 19th-century white anthropologists to view indigenous cultures as scientifically inferior. Also possible is that trepanning was a practical way to treat fractures (the ancient Greeks certainly used it this way). With head wounds a familiar consequence of conflict or accident, practitioners might have observed the course of infection and realised that dead bone would eventually disintegrate (if the patient didn't die in the meantime). Removing these fragments manually would have been worth a try. We can't ask ancient communities why they made holes in heads, but their rationale could have been less barbaric than it at first appears. Ancient Egyptian medical specialists included the 'herdsman of the anus' Magic, religion and rational science mingled without contradiction in ancient Egyptian healing. A sick person could consult a doctor (called a swnw), a magician or a lay priest – or all three if they felt like it. One practitioner might be both priest and doctor, curing via a combination of medicines, incantations and prayers. Egypt's system of medicine was the first to be set down in writing, but its history remained obscure until hieroglyphs started being decoded in the early 19th century. Since then, papyri and depictions in tombs have shown that doctors had an extensive knowledge of disease and a rich pharmacopoeia of herbs, animal products and minerals. Prescriptions were prepared according to precise recipes that included long lists of ingredients and their measurements, and took many forms including pills, ointments, inhalations and enemas. One doctor particularly skilled in administering these enemas was Irenakhty, who lived in approximately 2150 BC. He was doctor to the royal palace and (among several other titles) held the position of neru pehut – herdsman of the anus. His proctological expertise was not a one-off: his predecessor Khuy was another anal guardian, who combined the role with his skills as a dentist to ensure both ends of the pharaoh's alimentary canal remained in tip-top condition. Plastic surgeons have long been able to offer new noses for old The loss of a nose – whether the result of punishment, unluckiness in sword-fighting, or disease – has historically led surgeons to try to restore the patient's features and dignity. The Indian surgeon Sushruta (c600 BC) used a plant-leaf template to dissect a flap of skin from the patient's cheek, leaving it attached by a strip called a pedicle. Twisting it so the wound surface remained downwards, Sushruta would suture it into the place of the missing nose and affix small reed tubes to act as nostrils. Similar procedures re-emerged in Renaissance Italy, when surgical families the Brancas and the Vianeos developed methods of creating a new nose from the skin of a patient's arm. It was worth these practitioners' while, however, to keep the details secret to ward off competition. In 1597, Gaspare Tagliacozzi, professor of anatomy at Bologna, brought nasal reconstruction out into the open by publishing De Curtorum Chirurgia per Insitionem, which aimed to describe rhinoplasty scientifically and educate other surgeons about it. Tagliacozzi's operation involved making parallel incisions in the skin of the upper arm and drawing a linen dressing underneath the flesh. After about 14 days, he cut the flap at one end; another 14 days allowed the flap to mature and he then engrafted it to the patient's nasal cavity, using a system of bandages to keep the arm and face together. After another fortnight, he separated the arm from the nose (much to the patient's relief) and shaped the graft accordingly. But after Tagliacozzi's death in 1599, the operation failed to become mainstream. It was not until the late 18th century that European surgeons realised new noses were still being created in India. A letter to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1794 told of an Indian army bullock-driver called Cowasjee, who was captured by the sultan and punished as a traitor by having his nose and one hand severed. An unnamed Mahratta surgeon skilfully moulded a new nose from the skin of Cowasjee's forehead. British surgeon Joseph Constantine Carpue drew upon these reports to begin nasal reconstructions in 1814; his work revived interest in rhinoplasty and helped western surgeons catch up with their Indian counterparts. Smoking was good for you The words 'cigarettes' and 'health' are now unlikely bedfellows. Nineteenth-century medical cigarettes for asthma, however, were part of a long history of inhalation therapy that continues in the inhalers of today. Ideas about the causes of asthma changed over the centuries, so the inhalation of herbal smoke fell in and out of favour depending on the prevailing theory. By the end of the 18th century, however, asthma was being interpreted as a 'nervous' disease caused by spasms of the bronchi. Into this receptive medical environment came the plant datura stramonium, or thorn-apple. Already known in the US, people in Britain began smoking it between 1802 and 1810, after a similar remedy, datura ferox, was brought back by an East India Company physician. Joseph Toulmin, a surgeon from Hackney, substituted the more easily obtainable datura stramonium, gaining relief from his own asthma. Word quickly spread about the new remedy. At first, stramonium was smoked in ordinary tobacco pipes. It was possible to grow it oneself and dry the roots and stalks (although not the leaves, which have a dangerous narcotic effect). By the middle of the 19th century, smoking was socially acceptable and ever easier with the introduction of cigars, then cigarettes (and matches). Commercial brands of stramonium cigarettes fitted nicely into this context and were not seen as a quack remedy – doctors recommended them as a convenient way of inhaling the drug. In the early 20th century the spasmodic model of asthma gave way to the concept of allergic inflammation, and this made smoking seem less appropriate. At the same time, new drugs such as ephedrine provided an alternative to the potentially hallucinogenic stramonium. As the dangers of tobacco smoking became more apparent, medicated cigarettes fell out of favour – but, for a while, stramonium had played an important role in bringing relief to those struggling to breathe. Kellogg’s ‘asthma cigarettes’. (Reg Innell/Toronto Star via Getty Images) The first African-American female doctor graduated at the height of the American Civil War In May 1869, a doctor addressed the annual meeting of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. Slavery had been abolished in 1865, and the doctor expressed strong hopes for the future for black people. She also gave a prescient warning: it would “take earnest labour on the part of their friends to secure them all their rights.” The speaker was Rebecca Crumpler, the first African-American woman to graduate as a physician. She devoted her career to improving the health status of black people living in poverty, especially women and children. Crumpler was born Rebecca Davis in Christiana, Delaware, in 1831. She married Wyatt Lee in 1852, settling at Charlestown, Massachusetts. There, she worked as a nurse for local physicians, and these employers supported her successful application to the New England Female Medical College. Her husband died of tuberculosis in 1863 but she persisted with her studies and graduated the following year as 'doctress of medicine.' She briefly practised in Boston before travelling to St John in New Brunswick, Canada, where she married Arthur Crumpler in May 1865. She is now remembered as Rebecca Lee Crumpler, although she does not appear to have continued using the name Lee after her second marriage. Sadly, no identifiable photos of her have survived. With the American Civil War over, Crumpler went to Richmond, Virginia, to work for the Freedmen's Bureau, a government agency assisting freed slaves and impoverished white people in the former Confederate states. Despite her degree, she is listed in the records as 'nurse', receiving $10 per month. As she later explained, however, this part of her career was the 'real missionary work' to which she felt called. Serving a population of 30,000 black people emancipated from slavery yet still experiencing violent discrimination, she focused on assisting the poorest families. Her A Book of Medical Discourses (1883), was one of the earliest medical publications by an African-American writer, and specifically spoke to a female readership. Crumpler realised that knowledge is power and that encouraging women to be active in protecting their own and their children's health would improve their lives within a difficult context. The tapeworm doctor could expel your unwanted passengers The beef tapeworm, taenia saginata, can grow to over 20 metres long in the human intestines. As is also the case with its shorter but meaner cousin, the pork tapeworm, it absorbs nutrients from the contents of the digestive system and can survive peacefully for years – unless, that is, its host decides to evict it. In late 19th and early 20th-century America, the tapeworm provided a profitable career for itinerant practitioners, who travelled from town to town, parting people from their intestinal inhabitants. Such 'tapeworm specialists' are not exactly a much-fêted part of the history of medicine, but their activities give an insight into the healthcare options available to rural communities. When treated by a worm doctor, you would have to fast for a day to get the worm hungry, then take a teaspoon of the essential oil of male fern in a cup of warm milk. After this, you lay down for a few hours before taking a draught of castor oil, turpentine and croton oil – the latter being toxic and a drastic laxative. The spectacular effects of this mixture can readily be imagined. Some tapeworm specialists were showmen, impressing the punters by displaying preserved 'worms' of enormous length. These were more likely to be fakes made from animal entrails than the real thing, so the tapeworm doctor became a fairly disreputable character. He's unlikely to be commemorated with a statue outside a hospital or a reverent biography detailing his selfless quest for medical progress, but he was part of the colourful variety of healthcare providers to whom the average person could turn when unable to afford a physician. Plague and inequality joined forces at the turn of the 20th century The word 'plague' sounds inherently medieval, but the Third Plague Pandemic finished within living memory. Previous pandemics had wiped people out indiscriminately, but this one disproportionately affected those living in poverty, highlighting the global health inequality that has been worsening ever since. The Third Pandemic emerged in China in the 1850s and crossed international borders during the 1890s. From Hong Kong in 1894, rats infested with plague-carrying fleas starting travelling the world on colonial supply ships, taking their lethal bacteria to every inhabited continent. The bacterium – yersinia pestis – was isolated the same year (1894) by Alexandre Yersin and Kitasato Shibasaburō, who independently found it within days of each other. In 1898 Paul-Louis Simond established rat fleas as the vector, or transmitter. As the disease spread to international ports, however, public health officials responded with quarantine programmes that isolated suspected sufferers on the assumption that the disease could pass from one human to another. Draconian measures by the British government in India led to political unrest; in the United States, existing anti-Asian prejudice fed on the disease's Chinese origin. When plague reached Cape Town via Argentina in 1901, its first victims were black dockworkers. South Africa's colonial government used this as a pretext to remove the African population of District Six, forcing them under armed guard to a location outside the city at Uitvlugt (Ndabeni). Segregation, which had been regularly mooted on ostensible health grounds for the previous two decades, began in earnest. The Third Pandemic killed around 15 million people, the majority in India and Africa. The disease's pandemic status officially ended in 1959, but plague has never been eradicated, and although yersinia pestis remains susceptible to the antibiotic streptomycin, multi-drug resistant strains occasionally surface. Let's hope future historians do not have to analyse a Fourth Plague Pandemic. Caroline Rance blogs at www.thequackdoctor.com about the history of medical advertising and health fraud. Her book The History of Medicine in 100 Facts (Amberley Publishing, 2015) explores medicine's history in bite-sized topics, from prehistoric parasites to the threat of antibiotic resistance. You can follow Caroline on Twitter @quackwriter and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/quackdoctor This article was first published by HistoryExtra in 2015