Before introducing our speaker the Chairman congratulated members Maureen and Peter Folland on their recent and very topical Diamond Wedding Anniversary.
Bob Ogley had been editor of the Sevenoaks local paper and a journalist for over 30 years when his book about the great storm of 1987 launched him into the world of publishing. After being told it wouldn’t sell he used his own savings to print 5,000 copies. These sold in one week and after subsequent reprints he has now sold 265,000. He has since ‘retired’ from the newspaper world to set up his own publishing company and he has now written and published 20 books. The subject of this evening’s talk is taken from one of them.
The 1800s was a time before gas, electricity, trains and there was no formal schooling. The largest towns in Kent were Chatham, Canterbury and Rochester. Roads between major towns were owned by Turnpike companies who were responsible for their upkeep and tolls had to be paid to travel on them. There was a lot of crime such as rustling, horse stealing, pick pocketing. At the start of the century those found guilty of such crimes could be hanged on Penenden Heath probably by William Calcroft the hangman. He was not a nice man as he liked the short drop which made it longer for the condemned to die. His perk was to keep the deceased clothes and he had a lucrative sideline selling the clothes of the infamous to Madame Tussauds to authentically clad their wax effigies for public display. Later in the century these same crimes attracted the lesser but still terrible punishment of imprisonment on one of the many Thames Hulks and/or transportation to the colonies. In Australia the convicts were known as ‘Prisoners of Motherland’- from which the Aussies have for ever named the British - POMs!
At the start of the nineteenth century the monarch was George III who is famed for losing the American colonies after the War of Independence at the end of the eighteenth century. His armies were still fighting into the nineteenth century but now it was Napoleon and the Peninsular Wars. The people of Kent were deeply troubled by thoughts of an impending invasion as the tents of the French army could be seen from Dover. Defences were being stepped up along the coast with armies of builders constructing a string of Martello Towers, Dover’s Western Heights and the Military canal at Hythe. During this century lived some of our greatest Brits and Bob gave us a short resume on each of them. William Pitt born in Hayes was our youngest Prime Minister at aged 24. His great friend was William Wilberforce although born in Yorkshire had the living at Teston; together they were the driving force behind the abolition of slavery.
Amongst iconic names such as; Mrs Beeton, H G Wells, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Captain William Blythe, Lord Nelson, Charles Darwin, Lord Tennyson and the leader of the Pre-Raphaelites Willam Morris. Lesser known were: Hannah More a writer and educator, who started the first formal education for poor children where they leaned to read the Bible in Sunday schools. Christine White, invented over-arm bowling due to her voluminous skirts when playing cricket with her brother John. At this time sportsmen considered over-arm bowling to be inefficient. However, John soon found out that she could do things to the ball when bowling over-arm which couldn’t be done with an under-arm technique. Sir David Salamons was the first person to own a motor car in England and Charles Lucas was the first person to ever be awarded a V. C. for bravery in the Crimean war.
But the person who possibly had the most impact on the nineteenth century, which has lasted through to this century, has to be Joseph Bazalgette, a civil engineer. He freed London from the threat of cholera and built the Thames embankments we stroll along today which had the most pleasant side effect of lessening the stink of the then largest city in the world. Bazalgette made the embankments to contain the river by draining the area alongside the Thames. Deep under the embankments to avoid contamination he placed foul water sewers. His sewerage system flowed to treatment works before discharging into the Thames and is so efficient its still in use today.
At the end of the talk Bob answered several questions from members.
