Also by Clive Bloom (all published by Palgrave Macmillan) RIOT CITY: Protest and Rebellion in the Capital (2012) VIOLENT LONDON: 2000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts (2010) BESTSELLERS: Popular Fiction Since 1900 (2008) GOTHIC HORROR: A Guide for Students and Readers (2007) CULT FICTION: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory (1996)
Victoria s Madmen Revolution and Alienation Clive Bloom
Clive Bloom 2013 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-0-230-31382-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-33932-7 ISBN 978-1-137-31897-8 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137318978 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Frontispiece image: Queen Victoria, published in 1887 by Charles Knight with the title Her Majesty s Gracious Smile Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
To my family as yet unborn, makers of the future
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Contents Acknowledgements viii 1 Manypeeplia Upsidownia 1 2 Radical Lunacy 13 3 The Shock of Vril 29 4 Massacre at Trafalgar 48 5 Sherlock Holmes and the Fairies 56 6 Knocking on Heaven s Door 68 7 Tinker Bell on Mars 86 8 Chatterton s Scorcher 103 9 The Death Machine of Hartman the Anarchist 120 10 Russia on the Clyde 136 11 Smoked Salmon and Onions 148 12 Imagined Worlds Made Real 160 13 Playing Cricket in the Corridors 171 14 The Collective Dreams of Bees 181 15 The Way of the Ego 194 16 Vegetarian Revolutionaries 219 17 On the Frontier 233 18 The Lifting of the Fog 246 19 The Crusade 257 20 The Sound of Distant Drums 278 Bibliography 290 Index 295 vii
Acknowledgements Thanks are due to the following: Paul Ford at the Walsall Local History Centre and Jennifer Thompson at Walsall Central Library and Museum; Barrie N. Roberts, local historian, Walsall; the archivists at the Greenwich Local History Museum; Nancy Langfeldt and the librarians at the Bishopsgate Institute; Jo Parker, Tim Foster and Gary Heals at the Vestry House Museum, Walthamstow; Robert Thwaite and Renata Pillay, Bruce Castle Museum, Haringey Council; Colin Gale of the Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum Service; Catherine Coulthard at the City of London Police; Alice Tyrell at Notre Dame University; Nick Hamilton at Resonance FM; Malcolm Hopkins and William Hudson at Housmans Bookshop; Clive Bettington; Donald Rumbelow; Philip Ruff and Helen Rappaport, who worked on the Siege of Sidney Street exhibition at the Museum of London in Docklands with me; and finally, Michael Strang, Ruth Ireland, Jon Lloyd, Jennifer McCall and Clare Mence, who encouraged the last push. The portrait of Queen Victoria (frontispiece) is reproduced by kind permission of the GL Archive/Alamy. Information on the revolutionary movements described in Chapter 9 was first published in a greatly shortened form in the Jewish East End Society s special Siege of Sidney Street edition (23 November 2010). My thanks to Clive Bettington for permission to reprint. The description of the actual siege of Sidney Street in Chapter 19 first appeared in the BBC History Magazine (2011). My thanks to the editor David Musgrove for permission to reprint the article here. The story of William Courtney in Chapter 6 first appeared in Riotous Revolutionaries: A History of Britain s Fight for a Republic (2007). My thanks to the History Press for permission to reprint the section in a new context. The section on socialist churches and Arthur Conan Doyle in Chapter 5 and thereafter first appeared in a greatly abridged version as The Legacy of Sherlock viii
acknowledgements ix Holmes in Catherine Wynne and Sabine Varnacker (eds), Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle: Multi-Media Afterlives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Some small sections of Chapters 3, 4 and 5 first appeared as Angels in the Architecture in Peter Buse and Andrew Stott (eds), Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History (Palgrave, 1999), whilst the opening few paragraphs of Chapter 15 first appeared in Gothic Histories (Continuum, 2009).
In another moment Alice was through the glass. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass: and what Alice found there