William Wilberforce

A talented orator, many of William Wilberforce's fellow politicians said he could be Prime Minister but instead he devoted himself to his calling-the abolition of slavery.

29-yr-old William Wilberforce by John Rising, 1790, 

EARLY LIFE

William Wilberforce was born in  Hull, Yorkshire on August 24, 1759.

He was born to Robert Wilberforce (1728–68), a wealthy merchant, and his wife Elizabeth,.

A sickly child, William was their only son.

The Jacobean house where Wilberforce was born on Hull's High Street now stands as a Museum.

Wilberforce's birthplace

After his father's death, the nine-year-old slightly built Yorkshire boy went to live with his Uncle William and Aunt Hannah at their Wimbledon villa in the countryside.

William became interested in evangelical Christianity through the influence of his aunt, but his staunch Anglican mother, alarmed at the youngster's increasing non-conformist leanings, bought him back to Hull.

A fair classicist who had clear handwriting, Wilberforce attended Hull Grammar school. When he moved in with his aunt and uncle they placed him at a boarding school in Putney. On returning to Hull he spent 1771-76 at Pocklington Grammar School near York.

In 1776, William Wilberforce was sent to St John's College, Cambridge. He was shocked by the behaviour of most of his fellow students and later wrote: "I was introduced on the very first night of my arrival to as licentious a set of men as can well be conceived. They drank hard, and their conversation was even worse than their lives."

Amongst these surroundings, Wilberforce befriended William Pitt the Younger who would later become the Prime Minister.

POLITICAL CAREER  

The young Wilberforce had developed an interest in politics and at the age of 21, whilst still a student, he was elected Member of Parliament for Kingston Upon Hull.

Wilberforce's eloquent speaking voice whilst making political speeches was immediately noted, as was a tendency towards tardiness. He was seen as a man, who while weak in health and insignificantly small in body was blessed with an unique gift of witty and eloquent oratory.

Young Wilberforce

Politically deeply conservative, Wilberforce was opposed to radical changes in a God-given political and social order. He focused on issues such as the eradication of immorality through education and reform.

Wilberforce championed causes and campaigns such as the Society for the Suppression of Vice, British missionary work in India, the creation of a free colony in Sierra Leone, and the foundation of the Church Mission Society.

He was one of the founder members in 1824 of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Weak in health, after falling in ill in 1825 Wilberforce was forced to resign as MP.

BELIEFS 

An early influence on William's faith was the former slave trader, John Newton, who had become the vicar of Olney in Buckinghamshire. However after it was decided by his mother that the evangelical Newton was a bad influence on him, they lost contact and William drifted away from God for a time.

At Cambridge University Wilberforce pursued a hedonistic lifestyle enjoying cards, gambling and late-night drinking sessions.

In 1785 a journey across Europe with a Christian friend, Isaac Milner, changed his life for ever. During the trip, Wilberforce's reading of the Bible and Philip Doddridge's book, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul brought him to a spiritual crisis and he returned to God.

At first Wilberforce wanted to go into the church but eventually his friends persuaded him to stay on as an MP. One friend was John Newton, with whom Wilberforce had renewed acquaintance.

Wilberforce had a gift for setting forth what biographer John Pollock calls "the intellectual heart of Christianity." In 1797, he published A Practical View of Christianity, an exposition of New Testament doctrine and teachings and a call for a revival of faith. The book was a best-seller by the standards of the day; 7,500 copies were sold within six months.

ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE TRADE

In the 1780s over 100,000 Africans were being shipped abroad every year and more than half were being carried on British ships. Around the time of Wilberforce's conversion, a British campaign to abolish the slave trade, originally by Quakers had begun to gain support from within the evangelical wing of the church. The testimony of John Newton and many others about the cruel conditions, the slaves had to endure convinced many that something had to be done.

Medallion created as part of anti-slavery campaign by Josiah Wedgwood, 1787

As he grew in his faith, Wilberforce became increasingly interested in humanitarian affairs. He became a leader of the Clapham Sect, centered on Holy Trinity Church, Clapham in London, a fellowship of influential Anglicans who prayed several hours a day to get laws changed, lobbying hard to MPs. Wilberforce was seen as a potential key figure by the slave trade abolitionists and after a number of meetings and exchange of letters he saw that God was calling him to be a figurehead of the movement. He said "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the reformation of manners."

Wilberforce made his first major speech on abolition in the House of Commons on May 12, 1789. He reasoned the slave trade morally reprehensible and an issue of natural justice.

In 1791 the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, wrote on his deathbed to Wilberforce encouraging him not to give up in his fight against slavery. Two months later the evangelical MP moved in the House of Commons that the import of African slaves be banned but lost the vote 168-88. In 1793, another vote to abolish the slave trade was narrowly defeated by eight votes.

The war with France effectively prevented any further serious consideration of the issue for a time, and as politicians concentrated on the threat of invasion, there was a decline in public support for several years. However, despite battling ill-health, Wilberforce refused to give up and in 1804 he bought another bill to Parliament.

The House of Commons in Wilberforce's day by Augustus Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson (1808–1811)

Though that bill was defeated, a radical change of tactics, which involved the introduction of a bill by another MP banning British subjects from participating in the slave trade to the French colonies and an increasing amount of abolitionist MPs in the House of Commons, finally bore fruit for the persistent Wilberforce, In 1807, the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire though all existing slaves were still bound to their masters.

A blind, elderly John Newton witnessed the passing of the bill in the visitors' gallery. Britain was the first Western country to abolish the slave trade and much of this was due to the persistence of William Wilberforce MP.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

5ft 3ins and slightly built, Wilberforce had a tipped up nose that seemed too long for his face and hazel eyes.

William Wilberforce by Karl Anton Hickel, c. 1794

William Pitt the Younger said Wilberforce had the greatest natural eloquence he had ever heard.

After hearing him speak, Dr Johnson's biographer, Boswell, wrote: " I saw what seemed to be a shrimp mount upon the table but as I listened he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale."

Wilberforce was spirited with a heart of gold but scatty.

In his younger days Wilberforce was a fashionable young man with powdered hair and untidy clothes

In his older years, Wilberforce was a strange-looking little figure with hair still powdered though the fashion had almost died out. He wore a sometimes dingy black suit without ornament except for a diamond pin.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Wilberforce married Barbara Spooner at St Swithins Church, Walcot, Bath on May 30, 1797. She was the third child of Isaac Spooner of Elmdon Hall, Warwickshire, a banker of Birmingham, and his wife, Barbara Gough-Calthorpe, the sister of the first Lord Calthorpe.

Portrait in about 1797 by John Russell

Barbara bore six children, all of whom survived to adulthood. William, (July 1798), Barbara (1799), Elizabeth (1801), Robert (1802), Samuel (1805), and Henry (1807).

Samuel Wilberforce (1808-73) was chaplain to Prince Albert and later Bishop of Winchester. He was a leading opponent of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Wilberforce was a moderate drinker of wine and laced his bedtime milk with rum.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

William Wilberforce gave away so much that he lived his closing years in comparative poverty having sold his little estate and gone to live with his two parson sons. "A man can be as happy without a fortune as with one" Wilberforce said. He had learnt to travel light.

In 1833 all slaves in the British Empire were released, with the British Government paying a huge sum to compensate all the slave owners. When the dying Wilberforce heard this news on his deathbed, he mumbled, "Thank God that I have lived to witness a day when England is willing to give 20 million sterling for the abolition of slavery."

The day after Wilberforce heard about the government concessions that guaranteed the passing of the Bill for the Abolition of Slavery, he grew much weaker. Wilberforce died aged 73 early on the morning of July 29, 1933 at his cousin's house at 44, Cadogan Place, London.

Source Wilberforce by John Pollock

Mother Teresa

EARLY LIFE 

Agnes Bojaxhiu (later to be known as Mother Teresa) was born on August 26, 1910 in Skopje (now the capital of the Republic of Macedonia), Ottoman Empire. 

Mother Teresa of Calcutta; 1986 . By © 1986 Túrelio 

Her father Nikollë Bojaxhiu was a merchant who was in sympathy with Albanian patriots and her housewife mother was named Dranafile Bojaxhiu (Bernai).

Agnes' parents had three children, and Teresa was youngest. The family was ethnically Albanian.

Nikolla and Dranafila Bojaxhiu, were Catholic, even though most Albanians are Muslim and the majority of their native Macedonia are Macedonian Orthodox.

Agnes was a member of the youth group in her local parish called Sodality.

Memorial House of Mother Teresa in her native Skopje

Her father, who was involved in Albanian-community politics in Macedonia, died in 1919 when Agnes was eight years old.

CALLING

At the age of 12 Agnes Bojaxhiu already knew she wanted to be a missionary and her desire increased when local Jesuits, sent on missions of mercy to India, wrote enthusiastic letters back home about happenings in Bengal.

Agnes left home in 1928 at age 18 to join the Sisters of Loreto at Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, Ireland, to learn English with the view of becoming a missionary; She never saw her mother or her sister again.

The following year the teenage Albanian arrived in India, where she joined the Loretto Convent in Darjiling in the lower Himalayas. There Agnes learnt Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent.

Agnes took her first religious vows on May 24, 1931. She chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries; because a nun in the convent had already chosen that name, Agnes opted for its Spanish spelling (Teresa).

From 1929 to 1948 Sister Teresa taught geography and catechism at Loreto convent school in Entally, eastern Calcutta (now Kolkata) becoming its principal in 1944.

On September 10, 1946, while riding a train to Darjeeling, Sister Teresa experienced what she later described as "the call within the call", directing her to leave the convent and devote herself to the sick and impoverished. 

MISSIONARIES OF CHARITY  

She began missionary work with the poor in 1948 and two years later on October 7, 1950 Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity. 

Missionaries of Charity in traditional saris

Over the next decades Mother Teresa's organization established schools and opened centers to treat the blind, aged, lepers, disabled and dying throughout the world.

When Mother Teresa started out her Missionaries of Charity order she and her fellow sisters, inspired by her faith that God would provide, lived literally from hand to mouth as they shared with the destitute all they could cadge from well-wishers.

In 1979 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitute a threat to peace." She refused the conventional ceremonial banquet given to laureates, and announced that she planned to give the $192,000 prize away to build more relief centers for lepers and the destitute.

On January 25, 1980,  Mother Teresa was honored with India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna.

In 1982, Mother Teresa persuaded Israelis and Palestinians, who were in the midst of a skirmish, to cease fire long enough to rescue 37 mentally-handicapped patients from a besieged hospital in Beirut.

President Ronald Reagan presented Mother Teresa with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony on June 20, 1985 (see picture below).

In 1990 Mother Teresa resigned as head of order of Missionaries of Charity but later voted out of retirement by members and returned to her post.

By the time of her death, missions of Mother Teresa's order existed in more than 90 countries and had grown to include 40,000 nuns and many more lay workers and volunteers.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Mother Teresa was a wispy little woman with a crinkled, weather worn face and oversized hands.

Mother Teresa wore a blue edged coarse cotton white sari.

By Manfredo Ferrari - Own work, 

Mother Teresa was banned by the Albanian communist regime from returning to her home country. It was only in her late 70s she able to return to the land of her parents.

LAST YEARS, DEATH AND LEGACY

In 1983 Mother Teresa suffered a heart attack in Rome, while visiting Pope John Paul II. After a second attack in 1989 she received a pacemaker. In 1991, after a bout of pneumonia while in Mexico, she had further heart problems.

On March 13, 1997 Mother Teresa resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity, and she died of a heart attack on September 5, 1997.

Mother Teresa was granted a full state funeral by the Indian Government, an honor normally given to presidents and prime ministers, in gratitude for her services to the poor of all religions in India. Her death was widely considered a great tragedy within both secular and religious communities.

A "devil's advocate" is a person sanctioned by the Vatican to argue against the canonization of a potential new saint by pointing out their flaws and critically evaluating their miracles. The English journalist, literary critic and antitheist Christopher Hitchens served as a devil's advocate for Mother Teresa.

In 1999 Mother Teresa  headed Gallup's List of Most Widely Admired People of the 20th Century.

Albania's international airport, Tirana International Airport Nënë Tereza, is named after Mother Teresa. 

Tirana Aitport By Armand Habazaj 

Pope Francis canonized Mother Teresa at a ceremony on September 4, 2016 in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City. Tens of thousands of people witnessed the ceremony, including 15 government delegations and 1,500 homeless people from across Italy.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

EARLY LIFE 

She was born Harriet Elisabeth Beecher in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811.

Harriet was the seventh child of an Evangelical Protestant clergyman, Lyman Beecher. She grew up in an Connecticut Rectory.

Portrait of Stowe by Alanson Fisher, 1853 

By the age of 6, Harriet could read well and had memorized two long chapters of the Bible.

An avid reader when younger, Harriet especially liked Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, but was forbidden to read profane literature by her father.

Harriet began writing aged 12 as a hobby, mainly tales and sketches. One of her first works was a prize essay on the subject "Can the Immortality of the Soul be Proved by the Light of Nature."

FAMILY 

Harriet's father, Lyman Beecher (October 12, 1775 – January 10, 1863) the most powerful puritan preacher of his generation in the USA. He devoted his later life to preaching to the pioneers in Cincinnati, where he held revival meetings preaching against drunkenness, Catholicism and religious tolerance.

Portrait of Lyman Beecher by James Henry Beard, 1842

Her mother Roxana (Foote) died when Harriet was only five years old. A deeply religious woman, Roxana's last prayer was that her six sons should be called into the ministry.

Harriet's twelve brothers and sisters were all high achievers including Catharine who was a pioneering educator and Henry Ward Beecher who developed into a revered preacher and a stern denouncer of vice and sin.

CAREER 

Harriet enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary run by her older sister Catharine, then later taught students Latin there herself.

At the age of 21 in 1832 Harriet moved with her father to the rough border town of Cincinnati, Ohio where he had become the president of Lane Theological Seminary. She opened up a school there and also began writing on women issues for female magazines.

A 5,000 square foot house was constructed specifically in 1833 to house the president of the Lane Seminary. Harriet lived there from 1833 until her marriage to Calvin Ellis Stowe in 1836.

It was there she wrote her first book The Mayflower: Sketches of Scenes and Character Among the Descendants of the Pilgrims, which was published in 1834. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio. By Photo by Greg Hume 

Due to her husband’s poor health there was little money to pay the bills so Stowe began to write for a weekly anti-slavery journal, The National Era.

The National Era published on June 5, 1851, the first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which became the work for which Harriet Beecher Stowe became known.

It wasn’t until Stowe made a journey to Europe in 1853 after the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin that she realized the length of her new-found fame. In England she met Charles Dickens, Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin in addition to other famous literary figures.

During her tour of Europe, Harriet's husband Calvin Stowe gave public readings of Uncle Tom's Cabin, as part of the abolitionist debate.

In 1868, Stowe became one of the first editors of Hearth and Home magazine, one of several new publications appealing to women; she departed after a year.

Stowe wrote 30 books in total, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters, but none of her other works proved as successful.

MARRIAGE 

After moving to Cincinnati, Harriet joined the Semi-Colon Club, a literary salon and social club. It was there she met the fragile Calvin Stowe, a leading authority on the Bible. She became close friends in Cincinnati with the professor and his wife Eliza.

Eliza died in 1834 and Harriet Beecher married the widowed Calvin Stowe on January 6, 1836. The couple were devoted to each other and supported their partners in their work.

Calvin Stowe had poor health and spent time in a sanatorium, which left him depressed.

Calvin Ellis Stowe, circa 1850

They had seven children, including twin daughters. Tragedy struck when Harriet lost her favorite son, at the age of one and a half to cholera. The other six survived childhood but their eldest son Harry drowned at the close of his freshman year at Dartmouth and their third son Fred was wounded at Gettysburg and was left mentally impaired afterwards.

CHARACTER AND BELIEFS 

The demure Harriet Beecher Stowe had a bright mind with a remarkable memory.

Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe by Francis Holl, 1853

Harriet's basic faith was firm but she had many conflicts between faith and doubt after the deaths of two of her children and dealing with her husband’s illness.

Early in her adolescence Harriet experienced a calling to the church but for much of her life she was an uneasy Calvinist until much later in her life when she converted to the Episcopalian church.

While living in Cincinnati in the 1830s, Stowe traveled to Maysville, Kentucky, where she witnessed a slave auction. The distress she felt was one of several experiences that inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin years later.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Harriet wrote hymns including "Still, Still With Thee" after her son Charles died of cholera.

Harriet owned a stray cat called "Calvin" who took over the house and sat on the author's shoulders while she wrote.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Hartford, Connecticut, was Stowe's home for the last 23 years of her life. In 1872 fellow author Mark Twain moved next door.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

Stowe's last years she was confined at home, an invalid. Many historians believe the last ten years of her life, she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

Harriet Beecher-Stowe,

Harriet Beecher Stowe rewrote Uncle Tom's Cabin when she had dementia in her later years. She imagined that she was engaged in the original composition, and for several hours every day she industriously used pen and paper, inscribing long passages of the book almost exactly word for word. 

After two decades of retirement and a gradual decline to an invalid, Stowe died on July 1, 1896 at her Hartford home. on July 1, 1896.

Harriet Beecher Stowe is buried in the historic cemetery at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

Lord Shaftesbury

Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury KG was born on April 28, 1801 at 24 Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, London. He was styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851 and then Lord Shaftesbury following the death of his father.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, by John Collier (died 1934),

Though Ashley was born into wealth, his loveless childhood gave hi an insight into the miserable lives of the children of the Victorian poor. He made it his life's work to improve their lot.

Ashley was elected as the Tory Member of Parliament for Woodstock (a pocket borough controlled by the Duke of Marlborough) at the age of 25 in June 1826. Before he had completed one year in the House of Commons, Ashley had been appointed to three parliamentary committees. He received his fourth such appointment in June 1827, when the 27 year old was appointed to the Select Committee On Pauper Lunatics in the County of Middlesex and on Lunatic Asylum.

Ashley was an evangelical Anglican with a strong conviction of eternity and hope for the Second Coming of Christ. His beliefs underscored the urgency of immediate action and horrified at the treatment of the mentally ill, the young MP seconded a bill to change the law.

Fired by evangelical zeal, Ashley was instrumental in introducing Acts to alleviate the hard lot of factory workers, many of them children, who had been forced to work long hours in severe working conditions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In 1833 he championed the Factory Act which limited teenage children to working no more than 12 hours a day and nine years later Ashley succeeded in getting through Parliament the Coal Mines Act, which stopped women and children under the age of 13 from working in coal mines.

It took Ashley fourteen years to achieve his principal objective of the ten-hour work day for adult factory workers before he succeeded in getting passed by Parliament the 1847 Ten Hours Act.

Ashley was an early proponent of the Restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. In January 1839, he published an article in the Quarterly Review, which provided the first proposal by a major politician to resettle Jews in Palestine. His "Memorandum to Protestant Monarchs of Europe for the restoration of the Jews to Palestine" was published in the Colonial Times in 1841 (see below).

In 1863 The English clergyman and social reformer Charles Kingsley wrote a children's story, The Water -Babies. The book was intended in part as a satire, a tract against child labor including chimney sweeps. For twelve years after the publication of Water-Babies, Lord Shaftesbury campaigned vigorously for the banning of employing young boys who climbed into and cleaned chimneys. Eventually, the MP persuaded Parliament to pass the Chimney Sweepers Act 1875 which ensured the annual licensing of chimney sweeps and the enforcement of the law by the police.

Due to his constant advocacy for the better treatment of the working classes, Shaftesbury became known as the "Poor Man's Earl."

Lord Shaftesbury by George Frederick Watts.

Shaftesbury was President of the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) from 1851 until his death in 1885.

Lord Shaftesbury founded with his money Shaftesbury homes where orphans could be trained to earn a living.

Like many men of God, in his old age Lord Shaftesbury found new moves of God difficult to understand. He concluded, for instance, that the newly formed Salvation Army was a trick of the devil.

Lord Shaftesbury died on October 1, 1885 aged 84 at 12 Clifton Gardens, Folkestone, Kent, England.
Although he was offered a burial at Westminster Abbey, Shaftesbury wished to be buried at the parish church on his estate at Wimborne St Giles, Dorset.

A funeral service for Lord Shaftesbury was held in Westminster Abbey during the early morning of  October 8, 1885 and the streets along the route from Grosvenor Square and Westminster Abbey were thronged with factory workers, coal miners and their like who waited for hours to see the Poor Man's Earl's coffin as it passed by.

Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell was born on May 18, 1872, at Ravenscroft, Trellech, Monmouthshire.

He was the Third Earl Russell but he always liked being called Bertrand even after he inherited his title.

Bertrand Russell portrait.

FAMILY BACKGROUND 

The Russells had been prominent for several centuries in Britain, and were one of Britain's leading Whig / Liberal families.

Bertrand's paternal grandfather, Lord John Russell introduced the 1832 Reform Bill and started Britain on the road to democracy. He was twice asked by Queen Victoria to form a government, serving her as Prime Minister in the 1840s and 1860s.

His father, Viscount Amberley, was a freethinker who among other things, consented to his wife's affair with their children's tutor, the biologist Douglas Spalding. Amberley ruined his parliamentary career by advocating atheism and birth control for women.

Bertrand's mother, Viscountess Amberley was also from an aristocratic family, and was the sister of Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle.

His godfather was John Stuart Mill. The Utilitarian philosopher was Russell's greatest teenage influence .

CHILDHOOD

In June 1874 Bertrand's mother died of diphtheria. A year and a half later, his father died of bronchitis following a long period of depression.

After his parents' premature deaths, Russell and his older brother, Frank, the future 2nd Earl, were raised by their staunchly Victorian grandparents, Lord Russell, the former Prime Minister, and his second wife, the Countess Russell, nee Lady Frances Elliot.

Bertrand also had a sister Rachel who died when he was an infant.

The Countess Russell was from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and her influence on Bertrand's outlook on social justice and standing up for principle remained with him throughout his life.

Young Bertrand was raised as an aristocrat, he was a silent and shy boy.

Russell as a four-year-old

Russell's childhood was very lonely and he often contemplated suicide. He remarked in his autobiography that only his keen interest in mathematics seemed to keep him interested in living.

EDUCATION 

Bertrand was educated at home by a series of governesses, and he spent countless hours in his grandfather's library.

His brother Frank introduced him to Euclid, which transformed Russell's life.

Bertrand was fascinated by figures but his grandmother did not allow the governesses to teach him maths so he had to study it secretly

Russell studied philosophy and logic at Cambridge University, starting in 1890, where he became acquainted with the younger G.E. Moore, and where he later came under the influence of Alfred North Whitehead. He quickly distinguished himself in mathematics and philosophy.

Russell took Mathematics honors in 1893 and graduated in 1894, surprisingly with only a third.

CAREER 

For two years after graduation, Russell lectured in the United States before returning home to a lectureship at the London School of Economics.

In 1907 Russell ran for Parliament as a candidate of the Union of Woman's Suffrage Societies. He lost by 7000 votes.

Russell in 1907

Three years later, Russell attempted to be adopted as a Liberal candidate but his constituency association refused him when they discovered he was an agnostic.

Russell took up a job as a Maths Lecturer at Trinity College Cambridge in 1910. Until the outbreak of World War 1, Russell was an academic who was revolutionizing the study of mathematics, but due to his vocal opposition to the war he became an outsider and he lost his job in 1914.

In 1920, Russell traveled to Russia and subsequently lectured in Peking (now Beijing) on philosophy for one year. The Chinese loved the British lecturer as he considered the Chinese problems from a Chinese point of view rather than the imperialistic English. His Peking University students even launched a special Russell magazine.

In 1922-23 Russell ran as Labour candidate for Chelsea. However, it was a safe Tory seat and was easily defeated by the Conservative candidate Sir Samuel Hoare.

Throughout the remainder of the 1920s, Russell supported himself during this time by writing popular books explaining matters of physics, ethics and education to the layman.

Russell set up the experimental Beacon Hill School, near Petersfield, Hampshire on 1927, which allowed children complete freedom in expressing and behaving themselves. In other words, rather than repress their feelings they could swear at their teachers etc. At Russell's school there was mixed naked bathing, no punishment and no religious instruction. The school was a failure as mainly unruly children who had been expelled from other schools were sent there.

Upon the death of his elder brother Frank, in 1931, Russell became 3rd Earl Russell. He once said that his title was primarily useful for securing hotel rooms and the like.

In 1938 Russell moved to the United States where he taught at many universities and wrote his History of Western Philosophy.

Russell in 1938

In the spring of 1939, Russell moved to Santa Barbara to lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was appointed professor at the City College of New York shortly thereafter, but after public outcries, the appointment was annulled by the courts. Russell returned to Britain in 1944 and he rejoined the faculty of Trinity College.

On December 26, 1948, Bertrand Russell delivered the very first BBC Reith Lecture, launching a tradition that continues to this day. His series of six talks, collectively titled "Authority and the Individual," explored the complex relationship between individual freedom and the various forms of authority present in society.

Russell was awarded the Order of Merit, in the King's Birthday Honours of June 9, 1949. George VI was affable but slightly embarrassed at decorating the controversial freethinker saying, "You have sometimes behaved in a manner that would not do if generally adopted".

In 1958 Russell was elected the First President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

WRITINGS 

Russell wrote over 40 books.

The three-volume Principia Mathematica, written with AN Whitehead, was published between 1910 and 1913. The work, which explored the relationship between pure maths and logic took them ten years to write. Russell had to pay part of the printing costs himself so convinced was Cambridge University that it had a commercial loser on its hand.

Principia Mathematica became one of the most influential volumes for 20th century intellectuals and along with the earlier The Principles of Mathematics, made Russell world-famous in his field.

Russell  included a 360 page proof to show that 1+1=2 in Principia Mathematica. Despite its acknowledged importance in the study of the foundations of math is so complex and obtuse that it is rarely used today.

The title page of the shortened Principia Mathematica 

A History of Western Philosophy was written during Russell's time in the States in the 1940s. A survey of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century, it was a popular and commercial success, and provided Russell with financial security for the last part of his life.

In 1950 Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought". When Russell was awarded the honor, A History of Western Philosophy was cited as one of the books that won him the award.

Front cover art for the book A History of Western Philosophy. Wikipedia

PACIFISM 

While never a complete pacifist, Russell called his stance "Relative Pacifism," he held that war was always a great evil, but in some particularly extreme circumstances (such as when Adolf Hitler threatened to take over Europe) it might be a lesser of multiple evils.

Russell opposed British participation in World War I. Bertrand Russell's pacifist refusal to fight in World War 1 made him an object of ridicule in the press. He spent six months in prison in 1917 for an article he wrote for the No Conscription Fellowship in a journal

Russell recommended in the 1930s that Britain gave up its army, navy, air force and empire as then Hitler would have no need to invade us!

In the years leading to World War II, Russell supported the policy of appeasement; but by 1941 he acknowledged that in order to preserve democracy, Hitler had to be defeated.

Russell advocated nuclear disarmament from 1949. Five years later, Russell made a much acclaimed broadcast "Man's Peril," in which he criticized the Bikini A Toll H bomb tests.

CND was launched in February 1958 with Russell as its first President.

Russell made several absurd pronouncements during campaign for nuclear disarmament that Harold Macmillan and John F Kennedy were murderers for supporting the bomb.

Russell (centre) alongside his wife Edith, leading a CND anti-nuclear march

At the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, it was in reply to a message from Russell that Nikita Khrushchev revealed the Russian climbdown.

Russell spent a week in Brixton jail in 1961, after persistently obstructing the highway by sitting on it as part of his Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

BELIEFS 

As a young man, Russell was a member of the Liberal Party and wrote in favor of free trade and women's suffrage.

In his 1910 pamphlet, Anti-Suffragist Anxieties, Russell wrote that some men opposed suffrage because they "fear that their liberty to act in ways that are injurious to women will be curtailed."

Later a Socialist, Russell coined the famous phrase "better red than dead."

Russell had a genuine interest in religion, in which he grew increasingly skeptical. By 1910 he believed only in things that could be proved by experience.

Russell wrote a booklet, Why I'm not a Christian. When asked what he would say to God if he ever met him, Russell replied "I should tell him, that he had not provided me with the necessary evidence".

He was a member of a hard-core of progressive group of the 1920s intent on challenging the established order and influential in bringing in the permissive age.

Russell was in favour of eugenics, and together with other left-wing British intellectuals endorsed the fashionable idea with rare enthusiasm.

Russell wrote against Victorian notions of morality. His early writings expressed his opinion that sex between a man and woman who are not married to each other is not necessarily immoral if they truly love one another. This might not seem extreme by today's standards, but it was enough to raise vigorous protests and denunciations against him during his first visit to the United States.

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Russell had a slight, lean figure with bright eyes.

He was quiet and retiring but a frightful prig when young and an unprincipled philander when older.

Russell saw everything in black and white, he didn't believe in compromise.

He had a dry, reedy voice.

Russell had a mordant wit.

RELATIONSHIPS  

Russell first met the American Quaker, Alyssa Pearsall Smith, when he was seventeen years old. He fell in love with the puritanical, high-minded Alys, who was connected to several educationists and religious activists.

Alyssa Pearsall Smith in 1892

Russell's grandmother didn't like her so she whipped him off to Paris, and got him a job as Honorary Attaché' there. This didn't suit Russell so he only stayed for a brief time before fleeing home to Alys. They married at Friend's House in London on December 13. 1894.

Their marriage began to fall apart in 1901 when it occurred to Russell, while he was cycling, that he no longer loved Alys.

The couple separated a decade later. Alys pined for him for years and continued to love Russell for the rest of her life. During this period, Russell had passionate affairs with, among others, Lady Ottoline Morrell (half-sister of the 6th Duke of Portland) and the actress Lady Constance Malleson.

Russell first met British author, feminist and socialist campaigner Dora Black in 1916 when they both took part on a weekend walking tour. However, the pair did not embark on a relationship for another three years when Russell invited her to join him during his summer holidays.

Dora Black Wikipedia

Meanwhile his first wife Alys hovered outside to observe Russell's family life with Dora. In 1921, he divorced Alys so he could marry his fellow socialist campaigner.

Dora was a fierce left wing activist and a believer in free love. She reluctantly became Russell's second wife as she was pregnant and Russell wanted to legitimize her. They were married on September 25, 1921 at Battersea Town Hall with Eileen Power and Frank Russell acting as witnesses. Dora who was seven months pregnant with the couple's first child, John, wore black during the ceremony.

Their second child Kate was born in 1923 and Dora later had two more by a live in lover. Russell accepted them and gave his name to them for the sake of protecting his own children.

In 1931 Russell went on a bizarre holiday with Dora, his mistress, Dora's lover, his two children and his wife’s illegitimate baby.

John Conrad Russell later briefly succeeded his father as 4th Earl Russell and Lady Katherine Russell became Lady Katherine Tait.

Russell with his children, John and Kate

Russell's marriage to Dora grew increasingly tenuous, and it reached a breaking point over her adultery with an American journalist. They separated and later divorced.

On January 18, 1936, Russell married his third wife, a vivacious 25 year old redhead Oxford student named Patricia ("Peter") Spence, at the Midhurst register office. She had been his children's governess since 1930.

Russell and Peter had one son, Conrad.

Patricia acted as secretary to Russell. She left him in 1951 after years of Russell's womanizing. The final straw was during an unhappy holiday, when he declared during a picnic "I am as drunk as a Lord but then I am one." The bad tempered Patricia stormed off taking Conrad whom she forbade having any further contact with his father.

In 1952, Russell divorced Peter and later that year on December 15 he married his fourth wife, American writer and biographer Edith Finch. They had known each other since the 1930s after being introduced through her close friend and housemate Lucy Martin Donnelly, who was a friend of Russell's first wife, Alys. Finch moved to England in 1950 and remained with Russell until his death. By all accounts, their relationship was very close and loving throughout their marriage.

The four times married Russell lived out his belief in free love and became a hero to the sixties generation.

His eldest son John was driven into withdrawal, then open hatred followed by schizophrenia.

At Russell’s death he left behind two embittered ex-wives and a son and two granddaughters with schizophrenia.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Russell was bought up at his grandparents home at Pembroke Lodge, a Grade II listed Georgian mansion in Richmond Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.

Childhood home, Pembroke Lodge. By steve, Wikipedia

From 1955 Russell had a small house called Plas Penrhyn near Portmeirion in North Wales.

Russell liked to eat at a certain cheap cafe that served poor food. He explained the reason he ate there was "because I am never interrupted".

HEALTH 

At the age of 16 Russell strained his eyes (which was a blow as he was an avid reader). He was forbidden to read and write so he spent his time recovering learning poetry by heart.

In 1920 Russell had a serious illness in China due to lecturing in cold halls and as a result he refused to grant interviews. The resentful Japanese press (the Japanese were at the time occupying China) carried the news that he has died. On his way home Russell stopped in Japan and the press sought to interview him again. By way of reprisal he had his secretary hand out printed slips to each reporter "since Mr Russell is dead he cannot be interviewed."

Russell was one of 24 survivors of an airplane crash in Hommelvik in October 1948. Russell swam to safety clutching his briefcase whilst 19 people died. He said he owed his life to smoking since the people who drowned were in the non-smoking part of the plane.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

At age 89, Bertrand Russell was jailed for "breach of peace" for anti-nuclear demonstration.They offered to exempt him from jail if he pledged himself to "good behaviour", to which Russell replied: "No, I won't."

Russell was still active in international peace drives in his mid 90s.

Russell died of influenza on February 2, 1970 at his home in Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.

He was cremated without ceremony at Colwyn Bay and his ashes were scattered over the Welsh mountains.

Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820 into a rich, upper-class, well-connected British family at the Villa Colombaia, near the Porta Romana, in Florence, Italy. She was named after the city of her birth.

Her elder sister, Frances Parthenope Nightingale, was born in Parthenopolis, a region of Naples.

Florence's parents were William Edward Nightingale, born William Edward Shore (1794–1874) and Frances ("Fanny") Nightingale née Smith (1789–1880).

In 1821 The Nightingale family returned to England and tried to settle down in Florence's father's inherited property in Derbyshire. The Derby county property had an active lead smelter (1760-1935) which her father managed and owned.

William Nightingale had a new house built for the family in the village of Lea near Cromford, Derbyshire and the family lived there until 1823. The home was called Lea Hurst and served as a summer home to the Nightingales for the rest of Florence's life.

In 1825 The Nightingales moved to a 14 bedroomed mansion named Embley Park in the parish of Wellow, in Hampshire. It came in a 3,700-acre estate. This became the family's main home with Lea Hurst as a summer home.

Florence was educated largely by her father. She had exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age, and excelled in the subject under the tutorship of her father.

EARLY NURSING CAREER 

Florence had a strong desire to devote her life to the service of others from her late teens but at first she was respectful of her family's opposition to her working as a nurse, only announcing her decision to enter the field in 1844.

Young Florence Nightingale

When Florence announced that she wanted to work and train at nearby Salisbury Infirmary her parents were horrified, as a respectable lady did not enter in hospital work. However Florence was determined, she felt she was called by God to serve him in this manner.

After her parents refused her request to study nursing at a hospital, Florence was persuaded to study parliamentary reports. Within three years she was an expert on public health and hospitals.

In 1847 Florence helped to nurse victims of a cholera epidemic at a Middlesex hospital.

At the age of 30 she went first to Paris, then to the Kaiserwerth Institute, near Dusseldorf, a hospital in Germany to learn nursing.

In 1853 Florence went into residence in her first "situation" as superintendent of An Establishment for Gentlewomen During Illness at no. 1 Upper Harley Street, London.

That same year, Florence's father gives her a yearly allowance of £500 ($40,000-50,000 by today's standards.)

CRIMEAN WAR

In 1854 Florence Nightingale took a team of nurses to Scutari in the Crimea, as a result of Times' War Correspondent, William Russell's scaving reports of the conditions. There she worked up to twenty hours a day; and succeeded, despite the opposition of the military leadership, in radically improving the hospital's condition. She brought the death rate down twenty times within a space of a few months.

Florence spent £30,000 raised by the Times in the Constantinople bazaars on clothes and food for the British army.

When she first arrived in the Crimea, Florence traveled on horseback to make her inspections, she then transferred to a mule cart, and was reported to have escaped serious injury when it was toppled in an accident. Following this episode she used a solid Russian-built carriage, with waterproof hood and curtains.

Her nurses, in addition to their pay of 12 shillings, get a pint of port for dinner and a glass of sherry for supper.

Florence Nightingale's own trademark "look" was a simple black bodice and matching skirt with non-matching cuffs and collar of white lace.

Florence walked around with a linen Turkish army lantern, which was a candle inside a collapsible shade, crinkled like a Chinese lantern.

The Lady with the Lamp. Reproduction of a painting of Nightingale by Henrietta Rae, 1891.

By 1856 The Crimean War had ended and 19,600 Britons had died of which 15,700 were due to disease. The British Army lost ten times more troops to dysentery than to battle wounds. However by the end of the war, Florence Nightingale had succeeded in reducing the Crimean War Hospital death rate from 42% to 2%.

Florence was a heroine to the troops and public back home. She was the subject of songs and poems including the famous poem in which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow coined the term "lady with the lamp".

LATER CAREER 

On returning home Florence threw herself into a campaign to improve British army health and living conditions.

Florence was fascinated by statistics, mortality rates and other data relevant to her works. She included a lot of statistical input in her reports and was a pioneer in the visual presentation of information.

"Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the East" by Florence Nightingale.

The nursing pioneer invented a graph that she called the coxcomb or polar area chart to depict changing patient outcomes in the military field hospital she managed. Florence made extensive use of this predecessor to the pie chart to present reports on the nature and magnitude of the conditions of medical care in the Crimean War to MPs and civil servants who would have been unlikely to read or understand traditional statistical reports. This had never been done before and is common practice now. As such, she was a pioneer in the visual presentation of information.

Florence eventually became a member of the Institute of Statisticians.

By 1859, Florence had £45,000 at her disposal from the Nightingale Fund to set up the Nightingale Training School (now called the Nightingale School of Nursing) at St Thomas' Hospital.

Nightingale Training School for Nurses opened at St. Thomas Infirmary on July 9, 1860 with Mrs. Wardroper as its head. Florence paid very close attention to every detail

Florence Nightingale (middle) in 1886 with her graduating class of nurses from St Thomas'

Three years after Crimea, her Notes on Nursing was published in 1859. A slim 136-page book that served as the cornerstone of the curriculum at the Nightingale School and other nursing schools established, Notes on Nursing also sold well to the general reading public and is considered as a classic introduction to nursing.

Notes on Nursing was expanded and published again in 1860 and in 1861.

The only "wage" she ever earned in her life was the many royalties she received from her Notes on Nursing.

In her life time Florence never kept within her budget and relied on her father and others helped pay for her very expensive projects and good works.

Florence disliked the fame her work bought her. She never made a public statement and was never seen in public.

"Once or twice a year perhaps but nobody could be quite certain, in deadly secrecy, she went out for a drive in the park, unrecognised, the living legend flitted for a moment before the public gaze." (Lytton Strachey Eminent Victorians)

APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER 

Florence was tall, with  chestnut colored hair. As a young woman, Nightingale was described as attractive, slender and graceful.

Three Quarter length portrait of Florence Nightingale

She gave her name to a flannel scarf with sleeves for the benefit of invalids sitting up in bed, known as a Nightingale.

Florence was rousing, warm and private .While her demeanor was often severe, she was said to be very charming and possess a radiant smile.

The Times said in her 1910 obituary: “Her zeal, her devotion and her perseverance would yield to no rebuff and to no difficulty”.

BELIEFS 

Florence was raised as a Unitarian and was a devout Christian. On February 7, 1837 the 16-year-old heard the voice of God telling her that she had a mission. Quite what that mission entailed at that stage she didn't know.

Florence came to realize that God was calling her to devote her life to the service of others. She came to realize it was to be in the form of nursing, but acknowledged the difficulties this entailed in the climate of her era where the respectable lady's place was thought to be at home.

Painting of Nightingale by Augustus Egg, c. 1840s

In 1850, she visited the Lutheran religious community at Kaiserswerth-am-Rhein in Germany, where she observed Pastor Theodor Fliedner and the deaconesses working for the sick and the deprived.

RELATIONSHIPS 

In 1837, the 17-year-old Florence Nightingale met and fell in love with her first cousin, John Smithurst. However, their parents forbid them to marry due to their family connection. The heartbroken Smithurst, (a devout Christian) mooched off to Canada to be a missionary to the Indians.

12 years later Smithurst returned and proposed but both sets of parents again refused so he returned to Canada frustrated.

Her most persistent suitor was the politician and poet Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, but after a nine-year courtship she rejected him against her mother's wishes. Florence concluded that she could not have "work" of her own if she chose to follow her heart into this society marriage. Marriage would destroy her chance of serving God's call.

Baron Houghton

Milnes remained one of  Florence's staunchest supporters throughout her career.

By 1847, Florence was approaching a mental breakdown precipitated by a continuing crisis of her relationship with Milnes. Her friends, the Bracebridges took her to Rome with them.

While in Rome, Florence met Sidney Herbert, a brilliant politician who had been Secretary at War (1845-46), a position he would hold again (1852-1854) during the Crimean War. Herbert was already married but he and Nightingale were immediately attracted to each other and they became life-long close friends. Herbert was instrumental in facilitating her pioneering work in Crimea and in the field of nursing, and Nightingale became a key adviser to Herbert in his political career.

In 1857 Sir Harry Verney 2nd Baronet, an MP for Buckingham, proposed to Florence, but she declined. He then proposed to Parthenope, who accepted, and they married on June 24, 1858.

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

Florence Nightingale advised nurses that a little light music soothed the sick and restored the soul. In her Notes On Nursing Florence wrote that the human voice can be therapeutic on its own, but when a patient is unable to speak, frightened, or injured, music can make an immediate connection with the emotions they cannot put into words.

Florence Nightingale made a recording on July 30, 1890 to raise money for the impoverished veterans of the Charge of the Light Brigade. The recording was made on a wax cylinder by Colonel Gouraud, Thomas Edison's representative in Britain. The recording is now very difficult to hear, but the transcript of the recording says:

"When I am no longer even a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. God bless my dear old comrades of Balaclava and bring them safe to shore. Florence Nightingale."

The recording was released commercially as a 78rpm disc in 1935, twenty five years after Nightingale's death. It is the only known recording of Nightingale's voice.

During the early 1850s Florence had a pet owl called "Athena" who she carried in her apron pocket. She had to leave her feathered friend behind to reside in her attic when she departed for the Crimea.

Athena, can be seen today at London’s Florence Nightingale Museum.

In her life time Florence owned around 60 cats including large Persian moggies called Bismarck, Disraeli and Gladstone, and she refused to travel without taking them.

HOMES 

On her return from the Crimea Florence  took an hotel room in London which became the centre for her campaigning.

At the time of the 1861 census she was living at the Burlington hotel in Piccadilly, London.

In 1865 Florence Nightingale moved to 10 South Street, Park Lane where she lived for the rest of her life.

HEALTH 

In the Crimea, Florence suffered from Crimean fever which she possibly contacted from drinking contaminated goat's milk. She nearly died, but refused to return to England.

On returning home the "lady of the lamp" was convinced that she had terminal heart disease. Prostate and apparently helpless on a couch in her London home, she conducted a huge correspondence and received many dignities, ambassadors and politicians. In reality she probably had been weakened by the Crimean fever she'd contacted.

By 1896 Florence was confined to her bedroom permanently.

DEATH AND LEGACY 

Florence died of heart failure on August 13, 1910. The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives, and she is buried in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, England, next to her parents.

The grave of Florence Nightingale in the churchyard of St Margaret's Church. By Dmartin@ukonline.co.uk,

Six British army sergeants bore her coffin to the family group grave in St Margaret's churchyard.

The "Florence Nightingale Effect" is a term used to describe the phenomenon of caregivers falling in love with their patients. It is thought that this can happen because caregivers spend a lot of time with their patients, and they develop a close bond with them. Additionally, caregivers may feel protective of their patients, and they may see them as being vulnerable and in need of care.

While there is no evidence that Florence Nightingale herself ever experienced the "Florence Nightingale Effect," her work as a nurse has inspired countless others to care for the sick and injured. Her legacy is one of compassion and service, and she is remembered as one of the greatest nurses who ever lived.

A 1915 biographical film about Florence Nightingale was criticised for not mentioning her pet parrot.

'Florence Nightingale' is an anagram of 'Flit on, cheering angel' or 'Going? Then clean rifle.' or ‘Reflecting on healing’ or ‘No lice, filth, gangrene’.