I’ve been doing some research into London in the year 1862. For me, this is stepping back 25 years from my usual research area, so I find a lot of surprises, in addition to this novel technique for social distancing:
The first thing to do after putting on my crinoline was to find good maps of London, big maps where you can see street names and even buildings:
- Mapco’s Cross’s New Plan of London 1861
- VictorianLondon.org: Pictorial map 1854
- David Rumsey Map Collection: Colton’s 1865 Map
- David Rumsey Map Collection: Sanford’s 1877 Map
- Harvard Library’s Supplement to the Illustrated London News Map Guide to the International Exhibition of 1862
Guide to the what? The International Exhibition of 1862. Although the Great Exhibition of 1851, with its Crystal Palace, is more famous, this one was supposed to be even bigger. You can see the catalogue here. It took place in South Kensington, on Cromwell Road, where the Natural History Museum would be later.
The Victorianist blog has some good information, and points out that the death of Prince Albert in December 1861 put a damper on the whole proceedings from the start. And it says the building, above, cost £300,000 but the cost was covered by the profits from the Great Exhibition of 1851. My studies of Victorian science education claim that the entire system of British science education was basically financed by the same pool. Which makes me think that the money from the Great Exhibition of 1851 is like pieces of the cross. There is no possible way that they made enough profit in 1851 to fund everything that’s been claimed.
Another page with information is here.
And look, they even had cameras then:
Pieces of the cross! You crack me up.