Wall Street palpitating

It is 150 years today since the death of George Templeton Strong, a New York lawyer remembered for his remarkable diary, which provides a near-daily description, a living history, of his city during the mid-19th century. He was as keen on writing about fire emergencies, financial panic (‘Wall Street has been palpitating uneasily all day’), and riots in the streets as he was about the nuisance of organ-grinders outside his house. Some say Strong’s is the greatest American diary in the nineteenth century.

Strong was born in his father’s house in Manhattan in 1820, and was educated at Columbia College. He trained as a lawyer, and joined his father’s firm, practicing as a real estate attorney. He married Ellen Ruggles in 1848, both of them keen amateur musicians, and moved into a house near Gramercy Park. They had one son (also George, but not born until 1856), who became a composer and painter and spent most of his adult life in Europe.

In the 1860s, and through the Civil War, Strong took on various public service roles, serving on the executive committee of the Sanitary Commission (a precursor of the American Red Cross), helping found the Union League Club of New York, and acting as a trustee of Columbia College. He was also a vestryman at Trinity Episcopal Church, and, from 1870 to 1874, president of the New York Philharmonic. He died relatively young, on 21 July 1875. A little further biographical information is available at Greenwich Village History, Mr Lincoln and New York, or Wikipedia.

Strong is mostly remembered for the daily diary he kept from the age of fifteen and for the next 40 years - amounting to some four million words. The manuscript diaries are held by the New-York Historical Society, and have been edited twice for publication. The first time was by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas (four volumes, Macmillan, 1952) - all of which can be downloaded as pdfs from this website. This version was abridged into one volume in 1988 for publication by University of Washington Press. According to Nevins: ‘Strong was an artist who was consciously trying to render his own city, his own time, his own personality in such form that later generations could comprehend them.’ 

The diaries were also edited by Vera Brodsky Lawrence for her three volumes: Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong (University of Chicago Press, 1988-1999).

A few extracts from Strong’s diary (taken from the Nevins/Thomas volumes) can be found at Googlebooks in The Civil War - The Third Year Told By Those Who Lived It, edited by Brooks D Simpson; and in Writing New York - a literary anthology, edited by Phillip Lopate. Lopate says Strong’s diary is ‘the greatest American diary in the nineteenth century’, remarkable not only for its length but for ‘the flavoursome precision of the writing’.

Here are several extracts culled from Writing New York.

23 November 1851
‘Fearful calamity at a public school in Ninth Ward Thursday afternoon, a false alarm of fire, a panic, a stampede downstairs of 1,800 children, and near fifty killed on the spot and many more wounded - a massacre of the innocents. The stair banisters gave way, and the children fell into the square well round which the stairs wound, where the heap of killed and wounded lay for hours before help could reach them. The doors opened inwards. The bodies were piled up to the top of the doors; they did not dare burst them open and had to cut them slowly away with knives.’

5 July 1852
‘Have been at home all day writing. Tonight went on the roof awhile. It’s a beautiful sight the city presents. In every direction one incessant sparkle of fire balls, rockets, roman candles, and stars of all colors shooting thick into the air and disappearing for miles around, with now and then a glare of coloured light coming out in some neighbourhood where fireworks on a large scale are going off. A foreigner would put it in his book of travels as one of the marvels of New York, and compare it to a swarm of tropical fireflies gleaming in and out through a Brazilian forest.’

23 November 1855
‘I must ascertain whether the mighty bug-destroyer Lyons has no modification of his cockroach powder that will exterminate organ-grinders. We suffer peculiarly here, for the street is very quiet, and they play all round the square before they leave it and are more or less audible at each successive station. I have been undergoing the performances of one of the tribe for an hour and a half and have heard “Casta Diva,” “Ah, Non Giunge,” the first chorus of Ernani, and some platitude from the Trovatore languidly ground out six times each. It makes me feel homicidal. If Abel had gone about with hand organs, I shouldn’t censure Cain so very harshly. There goes “Casta Diva” for the seventh time!’

14 October 1857
‘We have burst. All the banks declined paying specie this morning, with the ridiculous exception of the Chemical, which is a little private shaving-shop of the Joneses with no depositors but its own stockholders.

Wall Street has been palpitating uneasily all day, but the first effect of the suspension is, of course, to make men breathe more freely. A special session is confidently expected, and the meeting of merchants at the Exchange at 3:30 P.M. appointed a committee that has gone to Albany to lay the case before Governor King. He ought to decline interference, but were I in his place I dare say my virtue would give way.

My great anxiety has been for the savings banks. Saw the officers of the two in which I feel a special interest (the Bleecker Street and Seaman’s). Both were suicidally paying specie and thus inviting depositors to come forward to get the gold they could get nowhere else and could sell at a premium. The latter changes from specie to bills tomorrow; the former did so this afternoon. All the savings banks are to do so tomorrow. The run has been very formidable; some say not so severe as it was yesterday, but bad enough. I think they will get through.’

14 July 1863
‘Eleven P.M. Fire bells clanking, as they have clanked at intervals through the evening. Plenty of rumours throughout the day and evening, but nothing very precise or authentic. There have been sundry collisions between the rabble and the authorities, civil and military. Mob fired upon. It generally runs, but on one occasion appears to have rallied, charged the police and militia, and forced them back in disorder. The people are waking up, and by tomorrow there will adequate organization to protect property and life. Many details come in of yesterday’s brutal, cowardly ruffianism and plunder. Shops were cleaned out and a black man hanged in Carmine Street, for no offence but that of Nigritude. Opdyke’s house again attacked this morning by a roaming handful of Irish blackguards. Two or three gentlemen who chanced to be passing saved it from sack by a vigorous charge and dispersed the popular uprising (as the Herald, World, and News call it), with their walking sticks and their fists.

Walked uptown perforce, for no cars and few omnibi were running. They are suppressed by threats of burning railroad and omnibus stables, the drivers being wanted to reinforce the mob. Tiffany’s shop, Ball & Black’s, and a few other Broadway establishments are closed. (Here I am interrupted by a report of a fire near at hand, and a great glare on the houses across the Park. Sally forth, and find the Eighteenth Ward station house, Twenty-second Street, near First Avenue, in full blaze. A splendid blaze it made, but I did not venture below Second Avenue, finding myself in a crowd of Celtic spectators disgorged by the circumjacent tenement houses. They were exulting over the damage to “them bloody police,” and so on. I thought discretion the better part of curiosity. Distance lent enchantment to that view.)

At 823 with Bellows four to six; then home. At eight to Union League Club. Rumor it’s to be attacked tonight. Some say there is to be a great mischief tonight and that the rabble is getting the upper hand. Home at ten and sent for by Dudley Field, Jr., to confer about an expected attack on his house and his father’s, which adjoin each other in this street just below Lexington Avenue. He has a party there with muskets and talks of fearful trouble before morning, but he is always a blower and a very poor devil. Fire bells again again at twelve-fifteen. No light of conflagration is visible. [. . .]

A good deal of yelling to the eastward just now. The Fields and their near neighbour, Colonel Frank Howe, are as likely to be attacked by this traitor-guilded mob as any people I know. If they are, we shall see trouble in this quarter, and Gramercy Park will acquire historical associations. O, how tired I am! But I feel reluctant to go to bed. I believe I dozed off a minute or two. There came something like two reports of artillery, perhaps only falling walls. There go two jolly Celts along the street, singing a genuine Celtic howl, something about “Tim O’Laggerty,” with a refrain of pure Erse. Long live the sovereigns of New York, Brian Boroo redivivus and multiplied. Paddy has left his Egypt - Connaught - and reigns in this promised land of milk and honey and perfect freedom. Hurrah, there goes a strong squad of police marching eastward down this street, followed by a company of infantry with gleaming bayonets. One A.M. Fire bells again, southeastward, “Swinging slow with sullen roar.” Now they are silent, and I shall go to bed, at least for a season.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 21 July 2015.

The weather in Ireland

‘The rain here is absolute, magnificent, and frightening. To call this rain bad weather is as inappropriate as to call scorching sunshine fine weather. You can call this rain bad weather, but it is not. It is simply weather, and weather means rough weather.’ This is from Irish Journal by Heinrich Böll, a German Nobel prize-winning author who died 40 years ago today. Although it is called a ‘journal’ and does occasionally read like one, there are no dated entries, and the text is more reminiscent of a travelogue or memoir than a diary.

Böll was born in 1917, in Cologne, Germany, into a working-class Catholic family. He was the eldest of four children, and his early life was shaped by the strong religious values of his household and the economic hardships of the interwar period. Böll attended the University of Cologne, where he initially studied German, history, and philosophy, but his studies were interrupted by World War II. Drafted into the German army, he served on the Western Front, an experience that profoundly shaped his pacifist beliefs and critical stance toward militarism. After the war, these experiences deeply influenced his literary themes of guilt, loss, and the human cost of conflict.

After the war, Böll returned to complete his studies, earning his degree before embarking on a successful literary career marked by a strong social conscience and a focus on the moral complexities faced by individuals in postwar Germany. He married Annemarie Cech, a journalist, in 1942, and together they had four children. Böll’s early career was distinguished by poignant short stories and novels that tackled the realities of war, guilt, and the rebuilding of German society. His most notable works include Billiards at Half-Past Nine (1959), The Clown (1963), and Group Portrait with Lady (1971), which earned international acclaim and cemented his reputation as a leading voice of the postwar generation.

Throughout his life, Böll remained an influential literary and cultural figure, vocally advocating for democracy, human rights, and social justice. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1972 for his uncompromising and compassionate writings that captured the spirit and struggles of his time. He died on 16 July 1985, in Langenbroich, West Germany, leaving behind a profound legacy as one of Germany’s most important and respected postwar authors. Further information is available from Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the Nobel Prize website.

Böll was not a diarist in the traditional sense, however he was a prolific letter writer and essayist, and he did keep notebooks with story ideas, sketches, and fragments. He also produced one book that, in title at least, has the trappings of a diary: Irisches Tagebuch (Tagebuch is usually translated as ‘diary’) published in 1957 by Kiepenheuer & Witsch. This was translated into English by Leila Vennewitz and published by Peter Owen in 1958 as Irish Journal. Despite the title, the book is more of a poetic, essayistic travelogue - part reportage, part fiction, part meditation on poverty, Catholicism, and human resilience. A modern edition published Northwestern University Press in 1998 can be sampled at Googlebooks.

Here are the opening paragraphs from chapters 1, 3 and 9.

‘Arrival

As soon as I boarded the steamer I could see, hear, and smell that I had crossed a frontier. I had seen one of England’s gentle, lovely sides: Kent, almost bucolic - I had barely skimmed the topographical marvel that is London - then seen one of England’s gloomier sides, Liverpool - but here on the steamer there was no more England: here there was already a smell of peat, the sound of throaty Celtic from between decks and the bar, here Europe’s social order was already assuming new forms: poverty was no longer “no disgrace,” it was neither honor nor disgrace: it was - as an element of social awareness - as irrelevant as wealth; trouser creases had lost their sharp edge, and the safety pin, that ancient Celtic clasp, had come into its own again. Where the button had looked like a full stop, put there by the tailor, the safety pin had been hung on like a comma; a sign of improvisation, it draped the material in folds, where the button had prevented this. I also saw it used to attach price tickets, lengthen suspenders, replace cufflinks, finally used as a weapon by a small boy to pierce a man’s trouser seat: the boy was surprised, frightened because the man did not react in any way; the boy carefully tapped the man with his forefinger to see if he was still alive: he was still alive, and patted the boy laughingly on the shoulder.’

‘Pray for the Soul of Michael O’Neill

At Swift’s tomb my heart had caught a chill, so clean was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, so empty of people and so full of patriotic marble figures, so deep under the cold stone did the desperate Dean seem to lie, Stella beside him: two square brass plates, burnished as if by the hand of a German housewife: the larger one for Swift, the smaller for Stella; I wished I had some thistles, hard, big, long-stemmed, a few clover leaves, and some thornless, gentle blossoms, jasmine perhaps or honeysuckle; that would have been the right thing to offer these two, but my hands were as empty as the church, just as cold and just as clean. Regimental banners hung side by side, half-lowered: did they really smell of gunpowder? They looked as if they did, but the only smell was of mold, as in every church where for centuries no incense has been burned; I felt as though I were being bombarded with needles of ice; I fled, and it was only in the entrance that I saw there was someone in the church after all: the cleaning woman; she was washing down the porch with lye, cleaning what was already clean enough.’

‘Thoughts on Irish Rain

The rain here is absolute, magnificent, and frightening. To call this rain bad weather is as inappropriate as to call scorching sunshine fine weather. You can call this rain bad weather, but it is not. It is simply weather, and weather means rough weather. It reminds us forcibly that its element is water, falling water. And water is hard. During the war I once watched a burning aircraft going down on the Atlantic coast; the pilot landed it on the beach and fled from the exploding machine. Later I asked him why he hadn’t landed the burning plane on the water, and he replied: “Because water is harder than sand.” I never believed him, but now I understood: water is hard. And how much water can collect over three thousand miles of ocean, water that rejoices in at last reaching people, houses, terra firma, after having fallen only into water, only into itself. How can rain enjoy always falling into water?’

Better than Proust’s madeleine

‘I am startled to find that on the last page of my diary for 1980 I myself wrote: “There will be a nuclear war in the next decade.” And then in capital letters, as if the lower case formulation was still inadequate: “WE WILL SEE A NUCLEAR WAR IN THIS DECADE.” ’ This is from the youthful diaries of British historian Timothy Garton Ash - celebrating his 70th birthday today. It’s one of a few diary entries he revealed in a 1997 book - The File: A Personal History - based on his time in Berlin and a report compiled on him then by the East German secret police.

Garton Ash was born on 12 July 1955. His father, John, had been a Royal Artillery officer, one of the first to land in Normandy on D-Day, and later a finance expert advising schools in the independent sector. Timothy himself was schooled at Sherborne, and then studied modern history at Oxford University. He moved to Berlin, in the early 1980s, to further his postgraduate research, and then travelled widely through Eastern Europe reporting on the emancipation of Central Europe from communism. He was appointed foreign editor of the Spectator, but also wrote for The Times and The Independent.

Since 1990, Garton Ash has been a Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford, and, since 2004, Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, where he is also the Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow. In the US, he maintains a part-time residence at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University). There is very little personal information about Garton Ash readily available online other than that he is married to Danuta, has two children, and is based in Oxford. More readily available - at Wikipedia, for example, is information on his fellowships and awards.

After authoring, in the 1980s and early 1990s, several books on the recent history of central Europe, Garton Ash turned his attention to a more personal story. He discovered that the Stasi had kept a detailed file on his activities and movements while living in Berlin, and he returned to the city to look into the file, and, ultimately to write and publish a book on his findings - The File: A Personal History (HarperCollins 1997, republished by Atlantic Books in 2009, with a new afterword).

‘In this memoir,’ the publisher says, ‘Garton Ash describes what it was like to rediscover his younger self through the eyes of the Stasi, and then to go on to confront those who actually informed against him to the secret police. Moving from document to remembrance, from the offices of British intelligence to the living rooms of retired Stasi officers, The File is a personal narrative as gripping, as disquieting, and as morally provocative as any fiction by George Orwell or Graham Greene. And it is all true.’

Of interest to me, to this web site, is that Garton Ash kept a diary during his Berlin years (I’ve no idea whether he has continued to keep one in the 30 odd years since - I hope so), and used that diary to inform and colour his literary and moral adventures in Stasi-land. Unfortunately, however, he rarely quotes from his diary at any length, preferring to cite it as the source of some piece of information about his whereabouts or feelings or thoughts. However, here are a few short extracts, as quoted in The File directly from his diary.

In the first pages of the book, Garton Ash reproduces a Stasi observation report on him for 6 October 1979 when he made a trip to East Berlin. He follows this by describing the contents of his own diary for that day, which has Claudia ‘cheeky in red beret and blue uniform coat’. ‘Over Friedrichstrasse,’ his diary continues, ‘searched down to the soles of my shoes (Duckers. Officer very impressed.)’ He then continues with memories of the day before quoting this, also from his diary of that day: ‘Becoming yet more intimate . . . The torchlit procession. The cold, cold east wind. Our warmth. The maze - encircled. Slipping through the columns, evading the policemen. Finally to ‘Ganymed’. Tolerable dinner. C. re. her ‘Jobben’. Her political activity. We cross back via Friedrichstr. To Diener’s . . . c.0300 at Uhlandstr. Daniel, desperate and pale-faced before the flat door - locked out!’

At the end of this introductory chapter Garton Ash writes: ‘The Stasi’s observation report, my own diary entry: two versions of one day in a life. The “object” described with the cold outward eye of the secret policeman and my own subjective, allusive, emotional self-description. But what a gift to memory is a Stasi file. Far better than Proust’s madeleine.’

Garton Ash’s diary continues to inform and enrich his story in the book, part memoir, part analysis, part drama (in the sense that he confronts several of the people who had informed on him years earlier, and considers at length whether to mention their real names or not). But, as I’ve said, he rarely quotes more than a few words. Here’s some further, very brief, extracts from later in the book when he’s heading for Poland to cover the rise of Solidarity.

- ‘Poland was what journalists call a “breaking story”. To follow such a story is like being lashed to the saddlestraps of a racehorse at full gallop: very exciting, but you don’t get the best view of the race. Yet I tried to achieve a view from the Grandstand, even an aerial view, and to understand the story as part of history. The history of the present. For me, Poland was also a cause. “Poland is my Spain” I wrote in my diary on Christmas Eve 1980.’

- ‘On the day I left East Berlin, my diary records: “It seems to me now odds-on that the Russians will march into Poland. (And the Germans? Dr D. today says Ja.)” ’

- ‘I am startled to find that on the last page of my diary for 1980 I myself wrote: “There will be a nuclear war in the next decade.” And then in capital letters, as if the lower case formulation was still inadequate: “WE WILL SEE A NUCLEAR WAR IN THIS DECADE.” ’

As mentioned above, Garton Ash appears once only in my own diaries. This was in September 2005, and I was much taken up with my failure to get any attention for a novel I’d written and self-published, Kip Fenn - Reflections (more recently re-self-published in three volumes under the title Not a Brave New World - a trilogy in three wives). I had been very excited about this novel - the fictional memoir of an international diplomat, but one set in the future, spanning the whole of the 21st century, and very much focused on political and social issues, particularly the rich-poor divide. Despite its original format and story-line, I’d been unable to get anyone in the publishing industry to even glance at it, let alone take it seriously. 

That particular day, I noted in my diary several stories in The Guardian, all of which related directly to themes in my novel, in particular Garton Ash’s: Decivilisation is not as far away as we like to think.
Garton Ash concluded that article as follows: ‘In political preaching mode, we may take [hurricane] Katrina as an appeal to get serious about addressing these challenges, which means the great blocs and the great powers of the world [. . .] reaching for a new level of international cooperation.’ Yes, ‘Reaching for a new level of international cooperation’ was precisely the main and urgent theme of my novel.

I also note in my diary that day how the media was giving a lot of attention to the UN’s 60th birthday, and calling for an increase in the amount of aid to the developed world - again this was also major theme in my novel. Indeed, the career of the narrator, Kip Fenn, in my novel leads him to become head of a major new UN agency designed to fund sustainable development in developing countries to counteract the worst effects of climate change.

This article is a revised version of one first published on 12 July 2015.

The rock and roll life

‘Today is my birthday and it’s the first one I ever spent on a train. Arrived Chicago at 1pm. Had a three-hour layover then caught the 4pm train for home. Should be there at 6.35 tomorrow morning. Happy birthday Bill. What a life.’ This is Bill Haley, the great - and some say forgotten - rock and roll star of the 1950s writing in a diary he kept for a few months at the height of his fame. Today, also, would have been his birthday - his 100th!

Bill Haley was born on 6 July 1925, into a musical family - his father played the banjo, and his mother keyboards. They moved from Highland Park, Michigan, to near Chester, Pennsylvania, during the Great Depression, but, by the age of 15, Bill had left home and was making money where he could by playing guitar. At some point during the 1940s, he was considered one of the top cowboy yodelers, known as Silver Yodeling Bill Haley.

For six years, Haley was a DJ and then musical director of Radio Station WPWA in Chester, Pennsylvania. He married his first wife, Dorothy Crowe, in 1946, and had two children with her. He led his own band - Bill Haley’s Saddlemen - which played at clubs around Philadelphia as well as on the radio. In 1951, the group made its first recordings on Ed Wilson’s Keystone Records. These included a cover of Rocket 88, a rhythm and blues song first recorded by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats earlier the same year in Memphis, Tennessee, (considered by some to be the first ever rock and roll record). The following year, the Saddlemen changed its name to Bill Haley and the Comets. Success soon followed, with many top 20 hits over the next few years. Already divorced, Haley married his second wife, Barbara Joan Cupchack, with whom he had two children, though only one survived through infancy.

Crazy Man, Crazy and a cover version of Big Joe Turner’s Shake, Rattle and Roll were the group’s first big hits; and the latter was the first rock and roll song to enter the British singles charts (December 1954). Rock Around the Clock, said to have been written for Haley, released in 1954, did not become a number one single, on both sides of the Atlantic, until a year later, after it appeared as the theme song for Blackboard Jungle starring Glenn Ford. History has settled on Rock Around the Clock, and specifically Haley’s recording of it, as the key record that brought rock and roll into mainstream culture around the world, thus in time displacing the jazz and pop standards performed by singers such as Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Bing Crosby.

Bill Haley and the Comets continued to record hits through the later 1950s, and Haley starred in the first rock and roll musical films Rock Around the Clock and Don’t Knock the Rock, both in 1956. It wasn’t long, though, before Elvis Presley arrived on the scene, eclipsing Haley, whose life, by the early 1960s, was falling apart: the Comets were in trouble, as was his marriage, and he had problem with tax debts. He fled to Mexico where he married his third wife, Martha Velasco, a dancer. They had one child together. There, he also signed up with a domestic record label, Orfeon, and his group released many songs recorded in Spanish.

As the 1960s progressed, Haley toured in Europe with fans keen to discover rock music’s roots, and the Sonet label gave him a lucrative deal. In the US, so-called revival concerts, first staged by promoter Richard Nader in 1969, brought Haley back into the limelight. By the early 70s, Rock Around the Clock was again a hit: re-recorded by Haley for a popular TV show, while the original recording appeared on the soundtrack of American Graffiti. Having been dogged by alcohol problems, Haley’s health deteriorated quickly. After performing in front of Queen Elizabeth II in late 1979 at a Royal Variety Performance, he went on tour to South Africa where he gave his very last performances - a tour to Germany was cancelled. He may, or may not, have had a brain tumour, but his mental and physical health collapsed in the months following, and he died in early 1981. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Further biographical information can be found at Wikipedia, in a Guardian re-assessment of Haley as a forgotten pioneer of rock and roll, Rik Hull’s fan site, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, or the Pennsylvania Center for the Book.

At the height of his early fame, Bill Haley decided to keep a daily diary. Edited extracts were first published (as far as I know) in three editions of the Now Dig This magazine (Nos. 154 and 155 in 1996, covering Haley’s 1956 diary, and No. 166 in 1997, covering Haley’s 1957 diary). Although these diary entries are not available anywhere online, they are quoted extensively in Otto Fuchs’s biography - Bill Haley - The Father of Rock and Roll. This was first published in German, and then in an English language version (900 pages) by Wagner Verlag in 2011. Here are some extracts from Haley’s diary as quoted by Fuchs from Now Dig This.

7 January 1956
‘Started second day on picture at 9.30 am. Everything going well. Saw some re-runs on first scenes. I look terrible I think, but everyone is giving me compliments. Hope we get through this. Quite an experience. Glad to have Cuppy with me.’ [Bill Haley and His Comets were with a large entourage in Hollywood to star in a film named after their greatest hit - Rock Around The Clock.]

9 January 1956
‘Reported at 9.30 am for third day at Colombia lot. Shot more scenes on the picture. Today did ‘Rock Around The Clock’ and ‘Rudy’s Rock’. That makes 5 songs so far we’ve done in the picture. So far the picture is going great. This is a big break for us. Keeping my fingers crossed. To bed early and up at them tomorrow at 7.30 am.’

13 January 1956
‘Finished picture. $20,000 for picture. Started 7.30 am on sixth day of picture. Had my big talking scenes today. Finished work on picture at 3 pm. Now it’s up to the public whether we’re movie stars or not. Worked in El Monte, California tonight - $1,500. Poor crowd. Promoter says disc jockeys are mad at me because I haven’t been able to see them. You can’t win. Hope I can straighten things out. Met Harry Tobias today. He gave me some songs for our firm.’

21 January 1956
‘Salt Lake City, Utah. Rainbow Rondeau - $1,900. Spent day doing D.J. promotion. Treated us like royalty here. Very nice hotel. Worked two shows tonight. Drew over 2,500 people. Very good crowd, Record of ‘Later Alligator’ already in Top 10 here. Looks like we have a big hit. This has been a good day.’

26 January 1956
‘Got my new 1956 Fleetwood Cadillac today. It’s pink and the most gorgeous car I’ve ever seen. Everyone loves the car. The sad part is I leave tomorrow morning for a 10-day tour of one-nighters. I hate to leave home again. But maybe soon we can slack off work.’

22 April 1956
‘3rd day [of 45 day tour]. Weather good so far. All the acts are behaving. Mosque Theatre, Richmond, Virginia. $1,430. Both shows sold out and turned thousands away. 9,600 people for two shows. This tour is like sitting on a keg of dynamite. The show is all coloured but our act. With the racial situation in the south broiling plus the newspapers and magazines like ‘Variety’ stirring up everyone about rock and roll, anything can happen. I hope my nerves hold up.’

28 May 1956
‘Left Miami at 9.30am on Eastern Railroad for Savannahm Georgia where we are tonight. Arrived Savannah at 7.25pm Sports Arena, Savannah, Georgia $1,420. 2,500 people here. Segregation problem is strong here as we expected. This time the negroes refused to come to the second show. Results: 2,500 people first show, second show cancelled. This race problem is not mine. I’ll be glad to finish this tour and let the south alone for now.’

6 July 1956
‘Today is my birthday and it’s the first one I ever spent on a train. Arrived Chicago at 1pm. Had a three-hour layover then caught the 4pm train for home. Should be there at 6.35 tomorrow morning. Happy birthday Bill. What a life.’

The diary entries for 1957 cover tours to Australia and Europe (inc. England), but Haley’s commitment to the diary is waning by then, and his entries get briefer and briefer.

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 6 July 2015.

The earliest literary diary

It is one thousand and eighty years since the death of Ki no Tsurayuki, a nobleman and poet renowned for his erudition and skills in Chinese and Japanese. He is acknowledged as the author of The Tosa Diary, which is considered the oldest literary diary in existence - predating English diaries by half a millennium!

Tsurayuki was a son of Ki no Mochiyuki, and grew up to become a poet of waka, short poems composed in Japanese. In 905, under the order of Emperor Daigo, he was one of four poets selected to compile an imperial anthology of waka poetry (Kokin Wakashū). His preface to the anthology is credited with being the first formal description of Japanese poetry. After holding a few offices in Kyoto, he became the provincial governor of Tosa province from 930 until 935. Later, he lived in Suo province. He died - according to Wikipedia - on 30 June 945.

Apart from his contribution to the imperial anthology, Tsurayuki is also considered a literary figure of some historical importance because of the Tosa Nikki - thought to be the earliest example of a literary diary. (The first English diaries date from the 16th century.) Although, apparently by a woman, and published anonymously, Tsurayuki is acknowledged as being its author. It was first translated into English by William N. Porter in 1912 and published by Henry Frowde as The Tosa Diary. Some pages of a more recent edition, published by Turtle Publishing (Boston) in 1981, are available to preview at Googlebooks.

The narrator of The Tosa Diary states at the outset: ‘It is generally a man who writes what is called a Diary, but now a woman will see what she can do.’ Porter explains in his introduction that this opening sentence means the diary is to be written in ‘the women’s language’. i.e. phonetic characters only, without the use of ideographs; and, in order to be consistent, the author writes as if he was a woman, and mentions himself only in the third person, using different names, such as ‘a certain personage’, ‘the seafarer’ etc. The diary tells of a journey by boat (being rowed) to the then capital Kyoto; although only 200 miles, it took 55 days. (At night, those travelling would camp on shore, and remain there if the weather for the day looked threatening.)

28 January 955 [first entry in published book]
‘One year on the twenty-first day of the twelfth month ‘a certain personage’ left home at the Hour of the Dog, which was the beginning of this modest record. He had just completed the usual period of four or five years as Governor of a Province; everything had been wound up, documents etc. had been handed over, and now he was about to go down to the place of embarkation; for he was about to travel on shipboard. All sorts of people, both friends and strangers, came to see him off, including many who had served him faithfully during the past years, and who sorrowed at the thought of losing him that day. There was endless bustle and confusion; and so with one thing and another the night drew on.’

6 February 955 New Year’s Day
‘Still they remained at the same place. The byakusan had been placed for safe-keeping during the night in the ship’s cabin; but the wind which is usual at this time of year got up and blew it all into the sea. They had nothing left to drink, no potatoes, no seaweed and no rice-cakes; the neighbourhood could supply nothing of this kind, and so their wants could not be satisfied. They could no nothing more than suck the head of a trout. What must the trout have thought of everybody sucking it in turn! That day he could think of nothing but the Capital, and talk of nothing but the straw rope stretched across the Gates of the Imperial Palace, the mullet heads and the holly.’ [These foods etc. are all to do with the then customs of New Year.]

18 February 955
‘The rain was gently falling at daybreak, but it soon stopped, and then the men and women together went down to a suitable place in the vicinity and had a hot bath. Looking out over the sea, he composed this verse:
Overhead the clouds
Look to me like rippling waves;
Were the fishers here,
Which is sea, and which is sky?
I would ask, and they’d reply
Well, as it was after the tenth day, the moon was particularly beautiful. All these days, since first he set foot aboard ship, he had never worn his handsome bright scarlet costume, because he feared to offend the God of the Sea; yet . . .’

25 February 955
‘Just as yesterday the boat could not start. All the people were sighing most dolefully, for their hearts were sad at wasting so many days. How many did they amount to already? Twenty? Thirty? It would make my fingers ache to count them. At night he could not sleep and was in a melancholy mood. The rising moon, twenty days old, came up out of the midst of the sea, for there were no mountain-tops (for it to rise from).’

28 February 955
‘The sun shone forth from the clouds, and, as there was said to be danger of pirates during the voyage, he prayed for protection to the Shinto and Buddhist gods.’

22 March 955
‘This day the carriage arrived. Owing to the dirt on board he removed from the boat to the house of a friend.’

23 March 955
‘That evening as he went up to the Capital, he saw in the shops at Yamasaki the little boxes painted with pictures and the rice-cakes twisted into the shape of conch shells, just the same as ever; and he wondered if the hearts of shopkeepers also were the same. [. . .] Planning to arrive at the Capital by night, he did not hasten. The moon had risen, and he crossed the Katsura River in bright moonlight. [. . .] He recited this also:
Once Katsura’s Stream
Seemed to me as far away
As the clouds of heaven
Now, while crossing, I perceive
It has wet my dipping sleeve.

And again he composed this:
Well I know my heart
And the River Katsura
Never were alike:
Yet in depth my heart would seem
Not unlike the flowing stream.

These too many verses are due to his excessive pleasure at reaching the Capital.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 30 June 2015.

Charlie instead of Concord

‘[Suu Kyi] came back after a hot trek in the sun to some village or other smelling strongly of cheap scent. It’s usual for enthusiastic ladies to spray Ma Ma with perfume [. . .] She said you know Ma Thanegi I’ve gone up in the world, they sprayed me with Charlie instead of Concord.’ This is part of a diary kept by Ma Thanegi, the personal assistant of Aung San Suu Kyi, during the early years campaigning for democracy in Burma. Today, Suu Kyi - the once celebrated global symbol of resistance to tyranny - turns 80.

Born in Rangoon (now Yangon) on 19 June 1945, Suu Kyi was the daughter of General Aung San, revered as the founder of modern Burma and architect of its independence from Britain. He was assassinated in 1947 when Suu Kyi was only two. Educated in Burma and later in New Delhi, Suu Kyi studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford. After graduating, she lived in New York City, where she worked at the United Nations, primarily on budget matters. 

In 1972, Suu Kyi married Michael Aris, a Cuban-born Englishman and a scholar of Tibetan culture, then living in Bhutan. They had one son the following year, and another in 1977. The family relocated regularly, living in Bhutan, Japan and India, but settling mostly in England. Between 1985 and 1987, she was working toward an M. Phil degree in Burmese literature at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London (and was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1990).

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to care for her ailing mother but was soon swept up into the popular uprising against the military regime. After the bloody suppression of the 8888 Uprising, she emerged as the leader of the newly formed National League for Democracy (NLD). Though tens of thousands of demonstrators were killed, and the country placed under martial law by the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Suu Kyi continued to campaign across the country. It was during these chaotic months that Ma Thanegi, then an artist aligned with pro-democracy painters, joined Suu Kyi as her assistant - and diarist, at the request of Suu Kyi’s husband to help keep him informed back in England.

Suu Kyi was first placed under house arrest in 1989, and spent nearly 15 of the next 21 years in detention, winning the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize while confined. Released in 2010, she led the NLD to a historic election win in 2015, becoming Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader. Her international standing plummeted after she defended the military’s brutal crackdown on the Rohingya in 2017, denying allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice. 

In February 2021, the military staged another coup, arrested Suu Kyi, and later sentenced her to 33 years in prison on politically motivated charges. Some sentences were reduced in 2023, and she was moved to house arrest due to health concerns. As of 2025, she remains incommunicado at age 79, while the NLD has been effectively dismantled and Myanmar continues to descend into civil conflict between the junta and pro-democracy forces. Further information is available at Wikipedia, the BBC and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Extracts from Ma Thanegi’s 1989-1990 diaries are quoted extensively in Peter Popham’s biography The Lady and the Peacock (Doubleday, 2011 - see Googlebooks), and they offer an earthy, unsentimental portrait of the woman once hailed as ‘the Burmese Gandhi’. 

Here is how Popham introduces, in his ‘Afterword’, this diary material: ‘There are many things about Suu’s life that are fascinating and instructive. It is extraordinary to observe a woman emerge from the comforts and duties of a suburban life in her early forties and take on a stature and role unimaginable even a year before. [. . .] Within months of accepting the leadership of the democratic movement she was already a legend throughout her country. But it never went to her head. I obtained proof of that when an acquaintance in London, who unfortunately I cannot name, gave me the diaries kept during Suu’s campaigning trips in 1989 by Ma Thanegi, her close companion. Suu’s radiant humanity shines out of those pages, along with her good humour, her stoicism, her appreciation of modern lavatories, and her frequent explosions of temper.’

Popham goes on to say that he met Ma Thanegi three times, and that when he told her he’d been given a copy of her diaries and planned to use them in his book, ’she did not demur’. He then explains how he believes he was betrayed by Ma Thanegi during an undercover trip to Burma in 2010, and how this led to his expulsion (before being able to conclude an interview with Suu Kyi). Ma Thanegi had spent three years in prison, and when released in the mid-1990s, had shown herself to be far more of a critic of Suu Kyi than a friend. Popham suggests she had been ‘won round’ by the country’s military intelligence. Suu Kyi herself did not cooperate with Popham in writing the biography, but Ma Thanegi’s diaries do provide a unique and substantial primary resource. 

Popham reproduces extracts without academic referencing. However, what emerges is a vivid, often intimate account of life on the campaign trail - packed roads, military harassment, star-filled nights, and soft-boiled eggs eaten before dawn. Thanegi is not reverent: she describes Suu Kyi’s tantrums, fatigue, and wistfulness as much as her charisma. There are detailed accounts of wardrobe choices and comic tales of being sprayed with knock-off perfume by well-meaning villagers.

Here are a few entries from Ma Thanegi’s diaries, mostly undated as quoted by Popham.

‘Gandhi is Suu Kyi’s role model and hero. Everyone knew it was going to be dangerous: some of the students had the Tharana Gon sutra chanted over them to prepare themselves for sudden death, a mantra recited in Buddhist ritual over the body of the deceased. Some became monks or nuns for a few days in preparation.’

***

‘Great harassment in Bassein, [. . .] armed soldiers barred the way out of the house we were staying in, only allowing us out in twos and threes to visit friends etc.’

***

‘An Australian senator came to see Ma Ma at 8am, [General Saw Maung had] told him elections would be held soon, after discussions with parties . . . Spent the whole night at Ma Ma’s place. Ma Ma up and down stairs whole evening, signing letters, seeing to papers, books. Dr Michael phoned after Ma Ma finished writing a letter to him.’

***

‘Left Rangoon at 4.45 am, fifteen minutes late. Ma Ma a bit annoyed. She was sleepy in the early part of the morning. I held her down by the shoulders on bumpy roads: fragile and light as a papier-mâché doll. Forced to stop unplanned at Pyawbwe . . . Ma Ma VERY annoyed. Stopped for sugarcane juice at Tat-kone: delicious! Ma Ma loved it. Lunch at Ye Tar Shay. People in the villages amazed and overjoyed to see Ma Ma. Ate lunch, fried rice ordered from Chinese restaurant next door.’

***

‘Ma Ma looked so wistful when I swiped chilli suace and onions from under her very nose. Later I relented and picked out onions sans sauce for her. Chilli sauce v. unhealthy stuff in Burma.’

***

11 February 1989

‘She wore green plaid longyi, white jacket, green cardigan with matching scarf and gloves. Got up (had to) at 4.30. Left for Loilam at 5.30, after I insisted she eat soft-boiled eggs.

At her request I borrowed a tape of Fifties and Sixties songs to listen to on the way, coincidentally the same we were listening to in Rangoon. I remember her singing along loudly ‘Love you more than I can say’ as she scooted upstairs. We sang along with the tape on the way: ‘Seven lonely days.’ etc.

Ma Ma v. annoyed at easy going plans. There was supposed to be a convoy on the road ‘for our protection’ but there was no one in sight. We reached Loilam without seeing any. Ma Ma hit the roof.’

***

‘Wonderful sight at Dukgo: as we entered the town the local NLD had issued red NLD caps and we marched in singing a democratic song which was also blared out from one car. We pushed in front of the MI’s videos and still cameras. Ma Ma had been saying for days how she was on the brink of losing her voice but it came on full, clear and strong as she started to talk at the NLD office, amplified out into the road, and she sounded darn mad.

While Ma Ma was talking, people crept up to listen at the side of the road. Police and soldiers told them to get back but we told them to come up and listen. Planned for Ma Ma to walk to jail to visit prisoners but when she came out of the NLD office such a large crowd followed her that we were afraid the police - who hurried to the police station and closed the gates - would say we were invading it and shoot us down. So many kids and women in the crowd that we decided just to pass the police station and jail by.

We walked out of town, crowds following, and I was afraid we would be walking all the way home. But at last, with the last goodbye, Ma Ma got into the car.

Had engine trouble all the way: water pipe broke late afternoon. Stopped for a while at Jundasar at a rice mill. Also we had to stop near a stream just before Dai-oo. Large pack of stray dogs - one of the boys shouted at them about 2/88. SLORC’s rule banning groups of more than five gathering together . . . [. . .]

Ma Ma sat in car and asked if I didn’t feel a sense of unreality about all we are doing. I said, dealing with stupid people can get us caught up in weeks of stupidity, no wonder it makes us all feel so weird.’

***

24 March 1989

‘Left Rangoon 6 am by boat [. . .] Reached Kim Yang Gaung in evening but no one came out of their houses. The whole place deserted, people peeping from deep inside darkened huts, only a few dogs going about their business. Learned that a local man who was democratic-minded was shot dead through forehead by army sergeant or corporal one week ago.

From there a long cart ride to Let Khote Kon. Easier to have gone on by boat but one of the NLD organisers felt we should visit that place and he was right. Ma Ma made speech in compound of a dainty little old lady named Ma Yin Nu. A very big crowd. I gave Ma Yin Nu a photo of Ma Ma . . .

Equally long cart ride back to boat, though it felt longer. Soon it became very dark. We never saw such large stars. As usual I pestered Ma Ma, telling her the names of my favourites. Halfway along our cart met a bunch of armed soldiers, five or six, who rudely called out to us, asking who we were, where we were going etc. There were about six carts in our caravan, our boys were travelling behind us but immediately they brought their cart up and parked between us and the soldiers. . .

Back on the boat at 8.30 pm and found out that we couldn’t leave because it was overloaded with people - NLD people from the villages we had visited had come along for the ride. Damn. And the tide was going out. We slept on moored boat, one corner partitioned off with two mosquito nets where Ma Ma and I curled up unwashed.’

***

‘Ma Ma getting to know well the Burmese character, the bad side. Said she is fed up to the teeth with pushy egoistic stupid people. She is getting to know the true Burmese character and is getting depressed by it. I have a feeling she is too idealistic and emotionally vulnerable. Easy-going as we Burmese are, we are totally selfish, ostrich-like in dealing with unpleasantness and very short-sighted.

When she is in a pensive mood I would search her face and feel a deep sorrow that so many burdens are on this frail-looking and gentle person. I think she needs to be more cynical to deal with the Burmese and of course hard-hearted to some extent. She feels hurt when people complain about the rudeness of our boys, I tell her politeness would not penetrate the thick skulls and dim minds of these people.

She came back after a hot trek in the sun to some village or other smelling strongly of cheap scent. It’s usual for enthusiastic ladies to spray Ma Ma with perfume that they all think is great, and the perfumes are either something called Concord or Charlie. Charlie is slightly more expensive, or Tea Rose, the scent of rose, and we are beginning to recognise these three. Ma Ma is more often sprayed with Concord and we hate this spray business. These ladies are not too careful where they aim the nozzle. Sometimes it gets into her face or her mouth, she has to be careful about moving her face or it would go into her eyes. She said you know Ma Thanegi I’ve gone up in the world, they sprayed me with Charlie instead of Concord.’

This article is a much revised version of one first published on 19 June 2015.

Kentucky and Tennessee both gone

‘This morning there comes a dispatch from Chattanooga stating that the enemy had taken Fort Donelson. Generals Pillow, Floyd, Buckner with their commands are prisoners, and that Nashville is in their power: Kentucky and Tennessee both gone, 12,000 of our men are prisoners.’ This is from a diary kept by the crippled and housebound teenager, LeRoy Wiley Gresham, during the American Civil War. Not published until 2018, the publisher compares it to Anne Frank’s famous WW2 diary.

Gresham was born in  1847, in Macon, Georgia, to John Jones Gresham - an attorney, judge, twice mayor of Macon, textile company president, plantation owner of some 100 enslaved people - and his wife Mary Baxter Gresham. Aged eight, a chimney collapse crushed his left leg, causing lifelong impairment. Despite physical limitations, he was precociously intelligent: a voracious reader of Shakespeare, Dickens, Latin and Greek classics; an adept chess player; and a talented mathematician and poet.

Though Gresham never fully returned to health, he remained under continuous care, receiving various Victorian remedies including morphine, opiates, plasters, belladonna, and mercury - all to little effect. Over the years, Gresham’s condition worsened: by 15 he described himself as ‘weaker and more helpless than I ever was,’ later contracting both pulmonary and spinal tuberculosis (Pott’s disease). He died on 18 June  1865, at the age just 17 (only weeks after the Civil War’s ended). Further information is available at Wikipedia.

Gresham is remembered today because of a near daily diary he kept from June 1860 to June 1865. It remained largely unknown until featured in the Library of Congress’s 2012-2013 exhibition, The Civil War in America, and in Harper’s Magazine and in The Washington Post. Subsequently, in 2018, historian Janet E. Croon edited and annotated the diary, releasing it as The War Outside My Window: The Civil War Diary of LeRoy Wiley Gresham, 1860-1865 (Savas Beatie). This edition includes extensive footnotes, family charts, a medical foreword, and appendices highlighting his final years. Much of the book can be sampled at Googlebooks, and images of the original pages are available at the Library of Congress website. Reviews can be read here and here.

The publisher says: [The diary] captures the spirit and the character of a young privileged white teenager witnessing the demise of his world even as his own body slowly failed him. Just as Anne Frank has come down to us as the adolescent voice of World War II, LeRoy Gresham will now be remembered as the young voice of the Civil War South.’

9 November 1861

‘Warm and very windy. Lockett and Bates came and spent the morning with me. No more from Port Royal. Mother is terribly scared. There has been a great battle at Columbus, Kentucky. Our side was commanded by Gen. Pillow. The Yankees by McLernand and Bradford. 8,000 men. Our ammunition gave out and we charged with the bayonet and routed them. They threw away all encumberments. The paper says “it is a bloody battle and brilliant victory.” A great many women and children came up from Savannah this morning. Aunt Sarah among them; Cousin Eliza comes up tonight. Gov. Brown’s message is out today. I have a bad pain in my back and took a Dover’s Powder. Bob Lockett hit Allen on the head with a rock today. We had a great deal of fun last night. Mary Campbell stayed to tea. We had a “white horse” to our delight and the terror of Allen, who cried like a baby. I played chess with Uncle LeRoy who beat me because of the above frolic. He left for the plantation this morning. Father bought Thomas a pair of boots.’

20 December 1861

‘Cloudy and warm. Great news! Minister Adams has demanded his passports. War with England is thought to be inevitable! Mr. Faulkner is in Norfolk. The 3rd regiment has been moved back to Norfolk. The Yankees have certainly got their hands full. A fight is hourly expected in Kentucky! Father bought Thomas an elegant new knife! Cotton is 42 cents a pound in New York! Father was advanced 15 cents a pound! Thomas has got a very bad cold. I got a letter from Wilson yesterday, giving a description of his journey to Athens. The wagon came up bringing Betty, her baby, and a boy ‘Bil.’ Uncle LeRoy came this evening at nine o’clock.’

21 December 1861

‘Warm, clear, delightful. I went round on Bond’s Hill to see the funeral procession of Mr. Bloom. It was in Mr. Johnston’s house. Colonel J. E. Jones commanded the military. Sam does not get along well at all. He has not gone one curb down. They were too large. The news about Minister Adams is contradicted.’

22 December 1861

‘Cold, damp. Rained in the night pretty hard. I took a Dover’s Powder on account of my leg. There is an account of a small fight on the Potomac. Our side was repulsed with 30 killed and as many wounded. No more from Mason and Slidell. The coals popped so tremendously we moved into Mother’s room. Dr. Fitzgerald came to see Betty yesterday and put a plaster on her and gave her some medicine.’

1 January 1862

‘The New Year comes in with a clear cool day. All the folks went to the Supper last night and Thomas stayed home with me. Mr. Emmett Johnson is to be buried here today. Mother has gone down now to help give the supper out to the poor. Tracy came up to see us yesterday. Played a game of chess: Tom beat me. Thomas wrote to Uncle Richard today. Mrs. Vardell, Mrs. Ralston’s sister, died very suddenly here yesterday.’

2 January 1862

‘Warm and cloudy. Took a game of chess: Tom beat me. ‘Ginco Piano’ opening. Maty, Wills, and Olivia Bates spent the morning here. It is rumored that they are firing on Fort Pickens. The fort commenced first. There are also reports of fighting between Savannah and Charleston. Finished The War of Roses. The weather today is as warm as in spring. Uncle Richard has got back to Portsmouth again and Uncle John is opposite.’

17 February 1862

‘Cold, damp, raw. Had very considerable sore throat through the night and this morning. We were fighting all day at Fort Donelson and had whipped them, taking 1,000 prisoners and were driving them back with cold steel, &c. This morning there comes a dispatch from Chattanooga stating that the enemy had taken Fort Donelson. Generals Pillow, Floyd, Buckner with their commands are prisoners, and that Nashville is in their power: Kentucky and Tennessee both gone, 12,000 of our men are prisoners. All the government stores in Nashville lost, and amid all this, Savannah is in imminent danger. So is Weldon, the key to all the railroads that run to Virginia. It’s perfectly awful! T wrote a letter to Mother today. It is reported that the enemy had shelled Bowling Green and, on account of some movement of the enemy, General Johnston had evacuated it. It commenced raining this eve at 3 and rained hard until now, 9 o’clock. Father and Uncle LeRoy took a game of chess: odds queen. Father mated Uncle LeRoy and I played 7 games of backgammon: I 4, he 3. Thomas and Uncle LeRoy played 7 games of draughts: Thomas beat 3 games.’

18 February 1862

‘Cloudy, damp, and rainy. Rained the whole night and until nine AM. Thomas is writing to Mother. Some people don’t believe that news about Fort Donelson. There has been a dispatch saying that Nashville has not surrendered and do not know about Donelson. Commenced to rain at ten AM, and has rained very hard until 9 PM. A rainy day truly. We received a short letter from Mother. She got along very well and was met in Sparta by the family. My sore throat is entirely well.’

State-created crime

One Rev. John William Horsley was born 170 years ago today. Although not much remembered, he was a social reformer of great character - as much at home helping inmates in Clerkenwell prison as making room for children to play in his church or guiding groups of parishioners on nature walks in Switzerland. Distinguished by a very large beard, he became a significant figure in Southwark, where he served as mayor for a year. In the late 1880s, he published a remarkable book - Jottings from Jail - to help ‘remove that ignorance of what our prisons and prisoners are’ and to suggest ways in which all ‘should feel their responsibility for the existence of crime and sin and misery’. One chapter in the book is based on a diary he kept towards the end of his term as prison chaplain. In one entry - many others of which are enlivened by a near-bitter sarcasm - he argues: ‘There is such a thing as State-created crime.’

Horsley was born on 14 June 1845 in Dunkirk, near Canterbury, Kent, the eldest son of a churchman. He was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and at Pembroke College, Oxford. After teaching for a few years, he was made assistant curate in Witney, and then, in 1875, moved to be curate of St Michael’s, Shoreditch. A growing interest in social issues led him first to an appointment as chaplain at Clerkenwell prison, where he served from 1876 to its closure in 1886. In 1877, he married Mary Sophia Codd, the eldest daughter of Captain Codd, governor of the prison. They had two sons and five daughters, though Mary died young, in 1890.

Subsequently, Horsley worked for the Waifs and Strays Society (later, The Children’s Society). After becoming vicar of Holy Trinity, Woolwich, he began campaigning for improved housing and sanitation in the area. By 1894, he had become rector of St Peter’s, Walworth. Here, he is well remembered for clearing the church’s great crypt so as to transform it into a playground for poor children in the neighbourhood. He believed that working for the welfare of children, defending their rights and recognising their importance, was a key to reducing crime. To set an example, he became a total abstainer, and campaigned actively for the Church of England Temperance Society, as he did for the Anti-Gambling League.

Horsley went on to serve as chairman for Southwark’s public health committee and for its largest workhouse. In 1905, when the new diocese of Southwark was created he became honorary canon of the cathedral; and, in 1909, he was mayor of Southwark. Two years later, he retired to the vicarage of Detling, near Maidstone, only resigning in mid-1921, just months before his death. He had been an enthusiastic alpinist and naturalist during his life, and had regularly taken groups of his parishioners for walking tours in Switzerland. There is very limited further information about Horsley readily available online - much of this bio has come from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which requires log-in). Jack McInroy also has some information on his Walworth Saint Peter Blog. That said, Horsley’s autobiography (up to 1910 or so) can be read freely at Internet Archive.

In 1887, shortly after his role at Clerkenwell prison had come to an end, Horsley put together a collection of his thoughts and writings on the prison system. It was published by T. Fisher Unwin and called Jottings from Jail - notes and papers on prison matters (freely available at Internet Archive).

In the preface, Horsley states: ‘These jottings from jail are just what their name implies. Time certainly, ability probably, was and is wanting, if I contemplated something more ambitious, a more detailed record of the experiences and observation of a decade spent as a chaplain of a metropolitan prison into which there came about an hundred thousand men, women, and children of all sorts and conditions, from the wholesale murderer to the child remanded only to be helped out of misery into the possibility and prospect of happiness and usefulness. These are but notes that I made from time to time, or articles or papers that were produced on sundry occasions and for divers audiences whom I wished to interest in the phenomena of crime in order that they might work for its prevention or cure. [. . .] My aim is to remove that ignorance of what our prisons and prisoners are, which in our grandsires’ days was the hardly excusable excuse for the existence of iniquities now inconceivable; to create or sustain more interest in, and sympathy for, a large but often forgotten or despised class of our brethren, and to suggest ways in which all in their several stations should feel their responsibility for the existence of crime and sin and misery, and so labour for the removal or prevention of all that makes these evils common and almost inevitable.’

Also in the preface, Horsley thanks Miss Manville Fenn for the design of the cover: ‘It represents a selection from my private collection of burglarious implements; some jemmies or sticks (Anglice, crowbars), one of which was presented me by him whose autobiography opens this book because he thought “it would be safer with me than with him;” some twirls or skels (skeleton keys and picklocks); a wedge for securing doors from the inside, a steel one for safe work; some neddies or life-preservers; and the firearms that it has become fashionable to carry, more out of bravado and because the mock-hero Peace (a canting old liar when under my care) used one than from any determination or desire to use them.’

Inside the book there is one chapter called A Month’s Prison Notes which is, in fact, a diary kept by Horsley for a month. He explains: ‘When the approaching abolition of the prison made it probable that I should speedily be regretting my discharge almost as much as the prisoners hope for theirs, one of the many things in my mind was the wish that I had had time to keep a private as well as an official diary, and to have noted down from day to day such incidents or observations as might have been useful in many ways hereafter. [. . .] True, I had kept for nine years notes of all cases of attempted suicide, which were between three and four hundred a year, and of all other cases specially commended to my notice by the magistrates; true, also, that I have a large notebook full of statistics and all sorts of curious subjects coming to my notice in prison; true, also, that my memory is retentive; but yet a daily record of things of interest would have been useful. During my last August I therefore endeavoured to make such a daily record as might show the varied nature of the work, and teach those who are not connected officially with prison work in what direction their intercessions and kindly thoughts and actions might tend.’

The diary is notable not only for the facts and figures Horsley brings to light about the prison and its prisoners, but for his lively use of sarcasm to stress social/political points.

3 August 1885
‘Of nine fresh cases on the female side I find one is 18, one 19, two 20, one 21, and the average age of all nine is only 25.

A lad, aged 19, spends four shillings in fourpenny ale, and then after midnight runs out with his baby, aged 13 months, and tries to drown himself and it. His wife was a rope-ground girl, and aged 15 at her marriage. A stalwart, intellectual, and good living race is likely to arise from such parentage!

The next case to which I come is that of a lad of 17 who has attempted suicide. How? I got into a pond. Why? Because I wanted to go to sea. This sounds humorous, but it turns out that he was trying to frighten his parents into acquiescence with his wishes. [. . .]

A rescue-worker complains to me of how Bank Holiday upsets girls who have hitherto been quiet and contented in Homes. It is commonly observed. The memories of drinks and “larks” attached to that day will come crowding in.’

5 August 1885
‘A woman, aged 36, has been eight years free, but has suffered five and seven years’ penal servitude. She must have begun young! She was turned out of doors “for cheek” by her stepfather when she was 15, then fell in with thieves and got five years when 15 for robbing a man of £63 in the street. She is not old, but she has outlived the possibility of a schoolgirl being sent to penal servitude for her first theft. There is such a thing as State-created crime.

A woman, aged 27, remanded for drunkenness and trying to rescue her husband, who was apprehended for being drunk and assaulting the police when they both had been “chucked out” of a public curse. They had regular work and are in comfortable circumstances; but then one must enjoy Bank Holiday. They have had seven children; one is living: of course this has nothing to do with their intemperance.

Justice Manisty sentences a man to two years for outraging a child aged 10, and regrets the law does not allow him to give more. The same copy of the paper records an exactly similar case in America - only there the man got twenty years. Oh our beautiful and righteous laws! “Who steals my purse, steals trash” - but can get penal servitude for so doing. Who steals the virtue of a child - cannot be punished half so severely. Oh these laws! “Proputty, proputty, proputty, that’s what I hear ‘un say.” [A quote from Tennyson.] Protect our spoons of course as long as they exist, but a national tumult is necessary to get protection for our girls.’

6 August 1885
‘Girl, aged 17, remanded for a petty theft from her place, and that I may find a Home for her if she promises well. Her mother says she is beyond her control, runs away from her places and gets into bad company, and that she has never been right since she was 10, when a “man” got six months for violating her. Two other girls, aged 13 and 9, were similarly treated by him, being waylaid on their way home from school. He was an accountant.

Another girl of the same age and charged with a similar offence I send to another Home. Her mother is dead, her father in the workhouse, and she has been brought up in a workhouse school, which quite accounts for her dulness and obliquity of moral vision. The huge barrack schools are utter ruin for pauper girls in comparison with any other system. Why is the British rate-payer so slow to note that children in Sutton District School cost £30 a head, while in Cottage Homes, such as those at Marston Green, the cost is but £20 10s., and children boarded out (e.g., by the King’s Norton Union) cost but £10 9s. 10d. a head per annum? I suppose they like to go on paying highest for the worst system and results, rather than lowest for the best.

A third girl this morning will go hopefully into a Home. She is only 18, but has led an immoral life for six months, yet is modest and quiet in manner; an orphan likewise.

An ex-prisoner is sent to me by a lady that I may help him. I find in conversation that a man for whom he worked twenty months is kindly disposed towards him and is now manager to a large firm. Yet it had never occurred to him to call on him! Verily, some men’s idea of seeking employment is to lie on their back with their mouth open, expecting it to be filled.

“Do you remember me, sir?” Yes, I did. This prisoner, a young clerk who had embezzelled in consequence of his drinking habits, and in spite of a wife and two young children, was a boy under me in a good school, of good birth, and his uncle an Archdeacon.

Sent to a refuge M.C., who was discharged this morning from Millbank and came to see me. For nine years have I striven to keep her straight, and to sixteen Homes have I sent her. A perfectly hopeless case of dipsomania I fear, but one must work against hope if one cannot work with it.’

7 August 1885
‘A young man, crippled and with only one hand, a friendless clerk, is helped and taken in by Mr. Wheatley, of the St Giles’s Christian Mission. Trusted on an errand with a cheque he absconds. Eventually he gets work at Westminster, and plays his employer the same trick. When no spark of honesty or of gratitude is discoverable, what can be done?’

8 August 1885
‘A country girl, aged 19, immoral and shameless, though only a month in London. Admits that sheer laziness and dislike to work have brought her on the streets.’

9 August 1885
‘Five males and one female brought in yesterday for attempting suicide. But “trade was bad” with us yesterday, for only forty men and six women were admitted.’

11 August 1885
‘A young lady with eight aliases, and all addresses given found to be false, is resigned and martyroid because every word of hers is not believed against those of others.’

12 August 1885
‘I wonder if this flower-girl, aged 18, used to sing the popular song, “We are a happy family.” She is in for assaulting her mother with a poker, and has twice previously been in for drunkenness: the mother is living apart from her husband, and has spent ten months out of twelve in Millbank doing short terms for drunkenness: a younger brother and sister have been sent to Industrial Schools. Yet the wonder is that any members of some families do right, and not that many do wrong. On what a pinnacle of virtue, inaccessible to a countess, is the daughter of a convict father and gindrinking mother who keeps straight!

Twice this week have I written to the Reformatory and Refuge Union to set their special officer on children that I find to be living in houses of ill-fame, of which the denizens or keepers come here. In one case, at any rate, there seemed a dereliction of duty on the part of the police, who, when they apprehended the mother, should have rescued the children.

Fate is the convenient scapegoat of those whose “can’t” is a shuffling substitute for “won’t” or “don’t like.” This man is in for theft from a public-curse; he is badly consumptive through drinking long and heavily; his father died of alcoholic phthisis; he has often tried to abstain, but never for more than six weeks; he has been warned by a physician at a hospital of how he is committing suicide; but he “supposes it is Fate.” ’

14 August 1885
‘One does not lose the sound of Bank Holiday (nor of Derby Day) rapidly in prison. A woman in yesterday for being drunk and violent had been a teetotaller for nine months up to Bank Holiday. A man who cut his throat after Bank Holiday spent in a public-curse was only yesterday well enough to be brought up and remanded.

Went last night to get the police in a certain district to take up a scandalous case of a girl, about 13, living with and being taken out nightly by her mistress, a notorious prostitute. Suggested that the case might have been dealt with any time this last four years under the Industrial Schools Act Amendment Act (which will go down to posterity as Miss Ellice Hopkins’ Act, as the Criminal Law Amendment Act will be called Mr. Stead’s). But the inspector had never heard of the Act. Quite courteous and willing to take up the case, of which he knew a great deal, but was ignorant of the Act under which scores of children in London alone have been rescued from immoral surroundings. The fact is, if the police know that those at head-quarters desire that an Act should be enforced, they can and will enforce it; if they do not know, or know the contrary, they don’t.’

This article is a slightly revised version of one first published on 14 June 2015.

Early South African diary

Adam Tas is remembered today not only as a key figure in early Cape Colony history but also as the author of what is often considered South Africa’s first political diary. Written in prison 320 years ago, his journal is a vivid and detailed account of colonial tensions, injustice, and resistance. Only some parts of the diary survive - starting in June 1705 - and these have been collated and annotated in an edition published by the South African Library.

Tas was born in 1668 in Amsterdam and arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in 1697. Like many Dutch settlers of the time, he sought opportunity in the expanding Dutch East India Company (VOC) colony. By 1704, he had married the wealthy widow of a prominent landowner, and he soon found himself among the elite burgher class of the colony.

During Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel’s administration, which began in 1699, tensions grew between independent settlers (known as ‘free burghers’) and the VOC’s increasingly monopolistic control over agriculture and trade. Tas emerged as the leading voice of protest against what he and others saw as corrupt practices by van der Stel and his allies. In 1706, Tas led the drafting and submission of a formal petition to the VOC authorities in the Netherlands, signed by 63 burghers, accusing van der Stel of abuse of power.

In retaliation, van der Stel had Tas arrested and imprisoned in the Castle of Good Hope. He was held for over a year without trial. The controversy, however, drew the attention of the VOC headquarters in Amsterdam, and in 1707 van der Stel was recalled. Tas’s efforts had helped bring about one of the earliest recorded successes of colonial resistance against VOC administration. Tas died in 1722. A little further information is available at Wikipedia.

Tas’s diary, kept during his imprisonment, provides historians with a rare first-person account of political thought and resistance in the early Cape Colony. It documents not only the daily routines and hardships of incarceration but also his reflections on justice, governance, and the role of conscience in public life. 

The original diary, written in Dutch, was lost but two partial copies survive. One, held in the Government Archives in The Hague since 1706, covers the period from 13 June to 14 August 1705. Another copy, discovered in Cape Town in the early 20th century, includes most of the material from the Hague manuscript and extends to December 1705, January, and February 1706. The South African Library later published a compendium of the two copies, as edited by Leo Fouché, with Dutch and English on facing pages. In addition to the diary itself, the book contains a detailed appendix discussing the broader political conflict with van der Stel. It is freely available to read online at Internet Archive. See also Historical Publications South Africa.

June 1705 [first entry]

‘Shortly after midday put in Hans smith and his good dame; they did send three Hottentots before with some goods, the which the said Mr. Hans Jacob had brought with him for us yesterday from the Cape. And first he did deliver me a letter from my sister Tas, together with one ream paper brought over by Mr. Fredrik Paran from Mr. Ysbraud Vincent, as also the book containing the story of the brothers Cornelia and Jan de Wit, and eleven numbers of the ‘Boekzaal’ lent a time ago to Mr. Starrenburg, and thereafter to Mr. van Putten. Further, 5 pair women’s and two pair men’s stockings sent us by mother out from the old country, two parcels powders, the book of sermons by the Rev. Balthazar Becker of blessed memory, and a canister with 8 measures tea, the same purchased for us by Mr. Kina; likewise 3 earth jars of gin of Mr. Pfeijffer; as also 6 lbs. hops of the same, but without invoice - sufficient good for the poor farmer. Last a letter from Mr. Kina, writing me how that the vessels ‘de Unie’ and ‘Zandhorst’ was come to anchor in Table Bay the 11th current, the last with a full cargo of timber for the Cape. Further that the ‘Berkenroode’ and another Zeelander likewise was upon point to come in. He do write also of his being for a time forth of his office by reason of some damned commission they do put upon him, for to be present at the unloading the wares from out the vessels. He writes me too that the third mate, David Brouwer, of Delft, hath got him a wife; and last he give me to know how that Hendrik ten Damme was lately become book-keeper at f.30, and a full-blown cashier, and that in the space of five years; whereto he did add, if that do so continue, he shall shortly grow to be Governor, for that, as it do seem, his fortunes in this kingdom is fast assured, etc.

After Hans smith with his goodwife had spent a little time with us, the lady with her dish of tea, etc., and we two together with our glass or two of wine and sundry pipes tobacco, they did make their way home at their ease. Am told among other things how that Mrs. Selijns is brought to bed of a son, as also how she is come together again with her husband, and how they do now live together. If this be like to hold, time will discover.’

14 June 1705 

‘Dull morning, with rain. A goodly rain too in the night, it being now blessed weather, for the which we do owe God thanks. Not to church to-day. Mr. Bek holding service at Drakenstein. Rained this day in showers, with sometimes hail between. Am told that Mr. Bek have made no sermon at Drakensteiu to-day, considering it did rain too hard. Our clerical crew in this country do vastly fancy their ease.’

9 December 1705

‘Warmish morning. Put in this morning my brother Jacobus van Brakel. Had news to tell, and among the rest how that there was four men at the Cape the Governor purposed for to oppress and persecute whatever he was able, to wit, Husing, Meerland, van der Heijden, and Tas, that was the foremost men chargeable with the mischief that was occasioned him, and there might one day befall those men what was befallen certain rioters and robbers in the riots at Amsterdam, that was hanged from a window of the weigh-house; a scurvy parable to even with rogues and rioters honourable men that would spend their strength in service of the community. Further, that the Governor thought to appear presently at Stellenbosch, for to take some persons there to task, or read them something of a lesson. At home they do scare children with a bogey, but men that do live in honour and in innocence, and are conscious of no ill-doing, need not to be dismayed of any man. Also a certain woman (T. D.) had been saying that the Governor might fairly lay certain parties by the heels, and had gotten for answer that mayhap the same could break the Governor his neck. But there is no man he hath more diligently taken aim against than my uncle Husing, albeit he cannot do the man the smallest hurt. Also he had averred that there was three things he had done, the which should breed him the greatest mischief, the first that he did conclude a contract with my uncle Husing for the slaughtering, the second that he had yielded the right to barter, and the third that he had given the wine contract unto Pfeiffer singly. So that he is now in a parlous strait place, nor knows where he shall turn. Meantime he do go about to win folk to his following. The aforesaid lady did likewise observe that the Governor was mighty astonished Diepenauw was fallen off of him, nor had he looked for it of the fellow. I doubt not in due course there shall more things befall him, the which he looked not for. And hereto may the good God send His blessing, for the posture of things here is now grown so outrageous, as it do go beyond all bound and measure. When brother van Brakel had eat breakfast here and drunk a glass or two of wine, he set forward to Mrs. Elberts’. This day the rest of our grain carried to the mill; it come to 16 muids. In the afternoon our slaves been busy cutting the ripest of the corn. In the evening come Mr. van der Heijden here for to speak with me; I did retail him the above news, and after a pipe of tobacco he took his leave.’