text:
Talk:Chinese cabbage

German link OK?
The link to the German version of "Chinakohl" shows a different vegetable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.135.68.186 (talk) 15:56, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * This article is technically about both varieties, although there is now a separate article for the "different vegetable" (napa cabbage). Jpatokal (talk) 22:03, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Naming
In Sainsburys, a supermarket in the UK, they sell "chinese leaves" and "pak choi" and these are not the same. Pak choi looks more like the vegetable in the picture at the Nutritional information on bok choy or even more like this image, whereas "chinese leaves" are what is in the picture in the article. Could someone clarify the nomenclature? Lupin 11:18, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

 * I've attempted, but this really is a hideous mess. But anyway, your links shows Chinensis varieties, while the article picture has a Pekinensis.  Should this article be moved to the clearly ambiguous Chinese cabbage, since as "bok choy" everybody thinks they know what it is? Jpatokal 11:18, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

 * I'm a major eater of this stuff. Using USA terms:

 * probably Bok Choy, maybe Choy Sum
 * Baby Bok Choy
 * Nappa Cabbage (or "Chinese Cabbage")
 * Bok Choy
 * Yu Choy
 * Choy Sum
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.34.186.143 (talk) 02:01, 9 February 2005 (UTC)

 * This isn't the US-opedia. The article covers all varieties of 白菜: there are a lot, and the nomenclature varies widely even in English-speaking countries. Jpatokal 02:09, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * This may not be the US-opedia, but the rest of you all can't come up with distinct and definite terms for all these things. Plus, the US dialect is twice as popular as all the others put together. Also, it is wikipedia, not wikipaedia. Unless some Brittish/Australian/Indian person can come up with distinct names for all these veggies, there really isn't any point in arguing. I have names, and others don't.
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.34.186.143 (talk) 16:49, 11 February 2005 (UTC)

 * You're missing the point here — scientifically this is all exactly one veggie, Brassica campestris, known as 白菜 in Chinese/Japanese. I've labeled the picture as such. Jpatokal 02:24, 12 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Science knows not what a veggie is. Both "veggie" and "Bok Choy" are culinary terms. What the Chinese wikipedia does is up to the Chinese; they have cn.wikipedia.org for whatever they like. If the article were named Brassica Campestris, no problem. The article is named Bok Choy though; in English it is highly abnormal to refer to pekinensis plant material as Bok Choy.
 * —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.34.186.143 (talk) 00:44, 13 February 2005 (UTC)

 * OK, you win — the article is now under "Chinese cabbage", with a note stating that in English "bok choy" typically means the Chinensis type. If needed this can be split further someday... Jpatokal 03:57, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * I think the root cause of this mess in this article is the mixed use of Cantonese and mainland China's terminologies. The external links above give very good illustrations on how each of these vegi are different in look.  Believe me, they all taste different too.  The term "bak choy" means white vegetable.  How much more generic a term can this be?  So it would be a mistake to interprete the English loanword "Bak Choy" by its generic meaning.  The term is spelled Bak Choy. From the sound of it, it is obviously based on Cantonese transliteration, so it should refer to the Bak Choy in Cantonese language, not "bai cai" in Mandarin which is totally a different species of plant life.  Since this English wikipedia is an international thing, you have Cantonese and Mandarin origins mixed with US, UK, Australian, New Zealand English translations which resulted in a mess here.  Many of these terms like "Bak Choy", "Yu Choy", "Choy Sum" and "Nappa" are obviously Cantonese because Cantonese immigrants have a much longer roots in Western countries.  Almost all Chinese emmigrants who worked in the gold mines near San Francisco and the TransPacific Railroads over a century ago were all Cantonese and Taisanese from the Guangdong region. The new waves of Mandarin speaking immigrants did not enter the US until probably the late 1970s.  So there is a much stronger influence of Cantonese language in the loanwords in the US English.  I bet the same applies to British, Canadian and Australian English too.  Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, New Zealand were all under the British Commonwealth.  The Cantonese influence on British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealander loanwords is obvious because of the Chinese emmigrants from Hong Kong to these countries.

 * So if we want to clarify all these terminologies, we should stick with the Cantonese origins of these names. In Cantonese "Bak Choy" is not the same and the Mandarin "bai cai".  "Choy Sum" is different from the Mandarin "cai sin".  Nappa in Cantonese comes from "黃芽白" which is also called "天津白菜" or "肇菜".  Associating "bai cai" with "Bak Choy" just because they write the same way in Chinese is the reason why this article is a mess.

 * I would suggest that all of these species of vegetables should spin off into separate articles with their own pictures and aliases.

 * Kowloonese 01:01, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

 * It's me again! I'm not following you; it's just that I usually concentrate on two topics — Chinese things and vegetables.

 * If you want to do what you suggest, I am delighted that someone is working on it who knows the varieties well and cares about right names and good organization. However, I first want to share a thought with you, something that is personally painful for me to admit, a conclusion that shocked me when I was first forced to it — there's really not that much to say about vegetables.

 * (stairs grimly at shoes, slowly pulls self together)

 * I'm saying I suspect it would take a mighty effort indeed not to end up with many, many stubby little articles with nothing but a picture and a few sentences about typical preparation, and half of their information in common.

 * If it were my call, I might split this into one article for Pekinensis Group and one article for Chinensis Group (under those or some choice of common names), but there are other possibilities. We could actually create one giant article covering all of Brassica rapa, including all of the Chinese cabbages, along with turnip (brassica rapa) and rapini, but that might be too much.

 * In any case, the turnip article definitely needs to make up its mind whether its about all of Brassica rapa or only about the turnip. I avoided creating the Brassica rapa article so that it would be easier to move things around in the future.

 * What do you think?

 * — Pekinensis 04:22, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * If you build it, they will come. Once the article is in place, all kind of info will come in.  If you are with wikipedia long enough, you would notice that no stub stays as a stub for too long.  Nutritional information, where they are produced, how they are related to other species, recepes, aliases, pictures etc.  I didn't suggest to have the cabbage article split into pieces.  We should have main article for all the common information and then have stubs for each variety.  Kowloonese 06:49, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

 * Rather than split off into stubs, why not just have a few more images representative of the different varieties and the names they're usually known by in the US/UK? Hopsyturvy 14:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
 * We have separate articles for Pinot meunier, Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc, which all differ from one another by just one mutation - so I think we can manage separate articles for subspecies of something as major as B. napa. And I'm normally a "joiner" rather than a "splitter" when it comes to Wikipedia articles. They won't be the biggest articles, but they'll be quite repsectable - there's not much there about the genetics, cultivation, history etc at the moment. And it might help reduce the confusion we've seen, although I understand some of that was under previous names.  PS "Pak Choi" seems the most common transliteration in British English, I don't know if that's a Hong Kong influence or what. FlagSteward 19:44, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

 * — This is my proposal:
 * It was hard to get to this article because of the naming problem. I was looking for 'paksoy' - the name used by Chinese residents in Europe. Sometimes the spelling 'paksoi' is also used. Bak choi, pak choi, paksoy, paksoi appears all to refer to the same Chinese cabbage. Here is a reference for 'paksoy', for example:

 * Paksoy Description

 * The literal Chinese meaning is in all cases 'white vegetable'. The reference also mention 'Snow Cabbage' as yet another another name.
 * I recommend that the different name variations are inserted to point to this article. Uffe (talk) 15:32, 19 July 2010 (UTC)

Varieties
Dozens that the article ignores. Omitted from the current article, for example, is the prized, slightly spicy 油菜 yóucài (yu toy in Taishanese, yau choy in Wuhanese), a small, flowering cultivar sometimes called "Shanghai bok choy." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.44.182.233 (talk) 23:30, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

 * "Yu choy" is Rapeseed (Brassica napus), an entirely different species. Badagnani (talk) 23:53, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm confused; is "baby bok choy" the same as "Shanghai bok choy" (which I've never heard of) or not? The Jade Knight (talk) 02:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Baby Bok Choy is the same as Shanghai Bok Choi, both of which are basically the young greener version of mature white-colored Bok Choy. Basically, think of it like how green bananas ripen to yellow ones. Baby Bok Choy is no spicier than the mature vegetable ;) Codehydro (talk) 03:52, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

 * Since baby bok choy is marketed separately from bok choy in (at least) the U.S. and Korea, and since it looks different, the relationship should be indicated in the article. (I wanted to know about baby bok choy, but when I entered it in Wik search, I got no hits.  I only found it hear in the Chinese cabbage discussion by "chance.")Kdammers (talk) 02:27, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Strange: After writing the above, I went back to the article and found that in fact BBC is explained.  I don't know why it didn't come up on the search.Kdammers (talk) 02:30, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Advocacy
A great stir fry has lots of Choy Sum and a bit of Yu Choy. Bok Choy will do, but it is like any other super-sized veggie: lacking in taste and generally damaged. It is also more likely to be bitter. Baby bok choy is like regular bok choy, but cute and expensive.

The Nappa Cabbage is bland and floppy junk, used as filler to cheapen egg rolls.

 * I had to say something because nappa is my favorite veggi. If you are also a major cook in this stuff, you can try cooking your nappa differently.  The favor of nappa will not come out until you cook it very very well done.  An uncooked nappa is bland.  A well cooked nappa is sweet and tendor.  Nappa is often used to line the bottom of Cantonese claypot dishes.  The nappa is cooked until it is tendor and the favor of all other ingredients soaked into the leaves.  Yes, I know you cannot expect vitamin C in such preparation of nappa, but it is the delicious way to eat it.  You just get your vitamin C from other veggi in fresh salad.  Kowloonese 01:23, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

 * And it's also an essential ingredient in kimchi! Jpatokal 05:16, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * Sure. Adding a lot of garlics and pepper will definitely fix the bland problem.  Kowloonese 06:49, Apr 22, 2005 (UTC)

Confusing article
I find this article (and Brassica rapa) a bit confusing. The introductory sentence clearly declares Chinese cabbage to be the chinensis variety, yet later paragraphs talk about the pekinensis group (calling it "Chinese white cabbage") as if it were a kind of Chinese cabbage (presumably the Chinensis group). And boy if you look up Brassica rapa, you find that Bok choy is the chinensis group (fair enough), but "Chinese cabbage" is now the pekinensis group. I think we can do better, though I don't know enough to start sorting it out. A-giau 05:14, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah the chinenis and pekinensis problem should be fixed, but personally I think the bigger problem with this article is the ambiguity of the term "Chinese cabbage". Namely, it could be used to refer to too many things. Maybe this article should be changed to a disambig. page and the information here moved to separate articles. Sjschen (talk) 18:28, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Peking and Beijing is the same thing. It is the capital of People's Republic of China. It does not seems to be about Pekinensis and Chinensis, but rather it is about Pekinensis and Cantonensis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.106.27.54 (talk) 12:18, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

青江菜
青江菜 (qing jiang cai) appears in a cookbook of mine and I think it should be added to the article. I think it is the Mandarin name of "baby bok choy" or "Shanghai bok choy." Badagnani (talk) 09:52, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, there are tonnes of names for this vegetable. I say add it. Sjschen (talk) 18:36, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

My wife is Shanghainese and says there's no such term as 'qing jiang cai' - the common vegetable we eat here in shanghai is simply called 'qing cai' by the locals (which just means green vegetable) qing jiang cai means green river vegetable and is not a term that anyone uses (if someone have a proper citation then perhaps it can be included). I'm not sure why this is under the label Chinese cabbabge which is called bai cai here (white vegetable) and is completely different. You may as well just have a page called 'chinese leaf vegetables' and include all leaf vegetable the chinese eat, bo cai, xiang cai etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.94.81.243 (talk) 13:40, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Image caption
The image is named and labeled "bok choy", but it sure looks like a pekinensis type to me? I've changed the caption to the unambiguous brassica rapa pekinensis, but I think the article desperately needs a good shot of a chinensis type for comparison. Jpatokal (talk) 04:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

 * We call what is in the photo bok choy in the United States. Look again at the enlarged white stems of the specimen on the left. Badagnani (talk) 04:38, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

 * Garr — you're right, but the photo makes it look confusingly similar to nappa in shape (but not color), as the left one is clearly forming a head while the article body says that it shouldn't do that. We need something more like this.  Maybe it's time to invest a few bucks for the greater good of mankind and go cabbage-shopping... Jpatokal (talk) 06:05, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

FYI, there are some good photos of various varieties at http://www.nickys-nursery.co.uk/seeds/pages/altsal-pak-choi.htm 91.84.181.38 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 11:36, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Inaccurate
Regarding this section:

I don't believe 油菜 is correct, as that is a different species, Brassica napus (rapeseed). Badagnani (talk) 18:32, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I think "yucai" may be 豫菜. Badagnani (talk) 18:35, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, no, that means Henan cuisine. Badagnani (talk) 18:40, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

 * I think yau choy (油菜) is the a kind of Cantonese disk and choy sum (菜心) the most frequently used vegetable in the disk. When choy sum is boiled in hot water, it is pak shap and taste plain.  To make it more tasty, oil is added to choy sum.  Ho yau (蠔油), the oyster (oily) sauce covers the disk of choy sum.  It is 蠔油菜心. — HenryLi (Talk) 00:26, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean "disk"? Like a computer disk? That doesn't make sense. Regarding 油菜, it's a different species from Chinese cabbage. Badagnani (talk) 05:05, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see, you mean "dish." And you think "yau choy" is made from choy sum plus oil. Interesting. It's confusing, however, because "you cai" is also rapeseed. Badagnani (talk) 05:06, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

 * I'll back him up -- 油菜 is a common dish in Singapore as well, although (AFAIK) pretty much any leafy green can be used. Jpatokal (talk) 13:37, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Preparation for eating
I miss such or similar section --demus wiesbaden (talk) 19:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Celery cabbage
In the U.S. there are two types of Chinese cabbage usually available in supermarkets: "napa cabbage" (which is shorter and fatter) and "celery cabbage" (which is longer and thinner). Other than their shape, they are very similar in all respects. These should both be mentioned. Badagnani (talk) 05:41, 13 December 2008 (UTC)
 * I've never seen "celery cabbage" around here. What part of the US have you seen this in?  The Jade Knight (talk) 19:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Hanja
Are there hanja for 배추? Badagnani (talk) 05:38, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

 * I'd presume it's 白菜, or the same as Chinese/Japanese. Jpatokal (talk) 06:53, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Energy Inclination??
The article talks about "energy inclination being cold" and then cites to a Chinese article. This sounds very new agey to me. The phrase "energy inclination" appears on Wikipedia in only one article (this one). Could someone at least clarify what "energy inclination" means, because it sounds to me like energy crystal vibrations, Tarot cards, and the Blarney stone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.11.202.195 (talk) 01:09, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

 * The term 'energy inclination' is completely arbitrary - not even related to the chinese term used in the source. The categorisation refers to is what I would call a food's 'edginess' - it mostly refers to spiciness/tanginess/bitterness, though texture and other elements come into play too. Bok Choy is ‘smooth’ due to its sweetness and general feel, but 'low toxicity' because it's not a particular strong flavour. The categorisation system itself is reasonable, and is often noted in chinese cooking. The article suggests pairing 'cold' with 'hot' for balanced recipies… and then it devolves to the level of the things you describe. In the field of nutrition, the given site is not a reliable source.

 * It might be reasonable to repurpose the source in a section on the use of the cabbage in chinese cuisine. A bok choy stir fry always has ginger or garlic or oyster sauce; and this is the reason why. I'll come back to this. --Systoll (talk) 13:23, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Pak Choi?
The name "pak choi" should be mentioned in the article, sure, but the common name is "bok choy". E.g., searching "bok choy" on Bing gives 1,410,000 returns, whereas "pak choi" gives a mere 274,000 returns.77Mike77 (talk) 17:25, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. There is WP:ENGVAR to consider: if the page was started with British English, that should be maintained (I haven't looked, but the first nonstub version would be controlling); but bok choy is not an Americanism and is by far the WP:COMMONNAME of this foodstuff and is used as such even in England, which is inconsistent within the UK and throughout the Commonwealth as to what is "Chinese cabbage", what isn't, etc. So, yes, please do clean it up if you have time.116.231.238.68 (talk) 08:04, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * To the extent bok choy is more American, it seems to be what the page started with (first non-stub edit). — Llywelyn II   08:21, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

 * One of the former edits also notes bok choi is preferred in Australia. If that's true, we could use a good source. — Llywelyn II   08:23, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Split
This page is a bit of a mess, principally because it's discussing two very distinct Chinese foods, which are both sometimes called "Chinese cabbage". Especially given that pek. (大白菜) now has its own page at napa cabbage, my feeling is that we should have an article devoted solely to chi. (青菜 & al.) at bok choy (per WP:COMMONNAME); move the content currently here to the appropriate split pages; and keep Chinese cabbage as a dab giving a link/overview towards both.

(The other alternative would be to merge napa cabbage back here, but it doesn't make sense to have a pek.-only page and a pek-&-chi combo page.) — Llywelyn II   17:54, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

 * Support. This one is a no-brainer. - Sweet Nightmares  23:38, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

 * Support. It's not only a no-brainer, it's the best solution to the problem.  Merging napa cabbage back in would probably only add, not lessen, the mess. Werhdnt (talk) 04:21, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

 * Support. Splitting is a sensible way to untangle this confusion.  Reify-tech (talk) 06:33, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

 * Support. To me "Chinese Cabbage" is Napa Cabbage and Bok Choy, akin to Swiss Chard, is not a "cabbage".  I would say there should be a page for Bok Choi and a page for Napa (Chinese) Cabbage, two totally different things. GS3 (talk) 10:13, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Naming Variations
I don't see any reference for the statement as to what names are commonly used in Australia. Up until a few years ago, it was only ever "bok choy" and perhaps occasionally "bok choi" in Chinese groceries and on menus. Only recently, as major supermarket chains have started to sell it, have I seen "pak" or "buk". I'm going to call in to question the information as it currently is, and unless a solid reference can be produced, I will remove it in time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.2.59.186 (talk) 13:27, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

 * More work is definitely needed on names. Whether "pak choi" is the most common name in Australia or not, I don't know, but its use in Australia is extremely easy to verify. See, for example, The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. --BB12 (talk) 19:13, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

title: Talk:Chinese cabbage


text:
Grigory Landsberg

Grigory Samuilovich Landsberg (Russian: Григорий Самуилович Ландсберг; 22 January 1890 – 2 February 1957) was a Soviet physicist who worked in the fields of optics and spectroscopy. Together with Leonid Mandelstam he co-discovered inelastic combinational scattering of light, which is known as Raman scattering.

Vitae
Landsberg graduated from the Moscow State University in 1913 and then taught there from 1913 to 1915, 1923–45, and 1947–51 (Professor since 1923). From 1934, he simultaneously worked also in the Physical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. From 1951 to 1957 he was a professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

Landsberg conducted pioneering studies on the vibrational scattering of light in crystals beginning in 1926. In 1928, Landsberg and Mandelstam discovered a phenomenon of combinational scattering of light (this phenomenon became known as Raman scattering or the Raman effect independently discovered by C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan in liquids). Landsberg discovered the fine structure in Rayleigh scattering. In 1931, he discovered a phenomenon of selective scattering of light.

He laid the foundation for the spectroscopy of organic molecules and the studies on inter- and intra-molecular interactions in the gaseous, liquid and solid phases in the USSR. He founded a major school on atomic and molecular spectral analysis. He developed techniques for the spectral analysis of metals and alloys (USSR Government Prize, 1941), and for the analysis of complex organic mixtures, including motor fuels. He is the author of the famous course of "Optics", and editor of the most popular "Elementary Textbook on Physics" (Volumes 1–3, 7th Edition, 1971).

In 1946 he became a full member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He later founded the Commission on Spectroscopy at the academy, which in 1968 was transformed into the Institute for Spectroscopy Russian Academy of Sciences. Landsberg was awarded two Orders of Lenin and several medals.

Discovery of the combinational scattering of light
Beginning in 1926, Mandelstam and Landsberg initiated experimental studies on the vibrational scattering of light in crystals at the Moscow State University. Their intention was to prove the theoretical prediction made by Mandelstam in 1918 regarding the fine structure splitting in Rayleigh scattering due to light scattering on thermal acoustic waves. As a result of this research, Landsberg and Mandelstam discovered the effect of the inelastic combinational scattering of light on 21 February 1928 ("combinational" – from the combination of frequencies of photons and molecular vibrations). They presented this fundamental discovery for the first time at a colloquium on 27 April 1928. They published brief reports about this discovery (experimental results with theoretical explanation) in Russian and in German and then published a comprehensive paper in Zeitschrift für Physik.

In the same year of 1928, two Indian scientists C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan were looking for the "Compton component" of scattered light in liquids and vapors. They found the same combinational scattering of light. Raman stated that "The line spectrum of the new radiation was first seen on 28 February 1928." Thus, combinational scattering of light was discovered by Mandelstam and Landsberg a week earlier than by Raman and Krishnan. However, the phenomenon became known as the Raman effect because Raman published his results earlier than Landsberg and Mandelstam did. Nonetheless, in Russian-language literature, it is traditionally called "combinational scattering of light".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Grigory Landsberg


text:
Commewijne District

Commewijne is a district of Suriname, located on the right bank of the Suriname River. Commewijne's capital city is Nieuw Amsterdam. Tamanredjo is another major town, while Meerzorg is the most populated.

The district has a population of 31,420 and an area of 2,353 km2.

One of the most populated of Suriname's districts, Commewijne relies primarily on agriculture for its income, with plantations dating back to the first Dutch colonisation of the area in the 17th century. In the 21st century, Meerzorg has been designated as a regional centre, and suburban area for Paramaribo, and is the site of many building projects. Nieuw Amsterdam has been steadily growing as well.

History
In 1621, the Dutch West India Company started to explore the Guianas, and traded with the indigenous people. When a force reporting to Francis Willoughby landed on Commewijne, there was already a small Dutch settlement who were trading with the indigenous people, and a group of Jews had arrived in Suriname in 1632. Surinam was conquered in 1667 by Abraham Crijnssen for the Dutch West India Company. Commewijne became the main location for plantations during the 18th century. A monument to the independence of Suriname is located in Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam.

Forts
Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam is located in Nieuw Amsterdam. On 10 October 1712, Jacques Cassard captured the plantation Meerzorg for France, and threatened Paramaribo across the Suriname river. To protect Paramaribo and Commewijne from future attacks, Fort Nieuw-Amsterdam was constructed, and opened in 1747.

Several other small colonial forts were constructed. The redoubts Frederiksdorp, Braamspunt, and Leiden were the first towns connected to a telephone line after Paramaribo to Nieuw-Amsterdam in 1888. The scale of the other forts was small, because when August Kappler visited Frederiksdorp in 1854, three soldiers were stationed there.

Resorts
Commewijne is divided into 6 resorts (ressorten):
 * Alkmaar
 * Bakkie
 * Margaretha
 * Meerzorg
 * Nieuw Amsterdam
 * Tamanredjo

Villages

 * Alliance
 * Ephrata
 * Katwijk
 * Kronenburg
 * Laarwijk
 * Mariënburg
 * Stolkertsijver

Nature and tourism
The Braamspunt Nature Reserve is located in Commewijne, because it is an important nesting ground for the leatherback sea turtles, and the green sea turtles.

The former plantation of Frederiksdorp is located near Johan & Margaretha, and has in 2004 been designated at as a monument.

Transport
Commewijne used to be isolated from Paramaribo, In 1931, a ferry opened between Meerzorg en Paramaribo, but to improve access to the eastern part of Suriname, the Jules Wijdenbosch Bridge was opened on 20 May 2000 replacing the ferry. The bridge is part of the East-West Link.

In 2020, plans were announced to build a bridge between Laarwijk and Domburg in order to develop the area, and relieve traffic congestion between Wanica and Commewijne.

Economy
The economy is still largely built around agriculture, and the industry in the district are mainly related to agriculture as well. The closure of the sugarcane factory Mariënburg in 1986 caused a regional decline. Meerzorg is becoming a centre for trade. Companies and banks have started to open offices or moved to the town.

title: Commewijne District


text:
Curragh incident

The Curragh incident of 20 March 1914, sometimes known as the Curragh mutiny, occurred in the Curragh, County Kildare, Ireland. The Curragh Camp was then the main base for the British Army in Ireland, which at the time still formed part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Ireland was scheduled to receive a measure of devolved government, which included Ulster, later in the year. The incident is important in 20th-century Irish history, and is notable for being one of the few occasions since the English Civil War in which elements of the British military openly intervened in politics. It is widely thought of as a mutiny, though no orders actually given were disobeyed.

With Irish Home Rule due to become law in 1914, the British Cabinet contemplated some kind of military action against the unionist Ulster Volunteers who threatened to rebel against it. Many officers, especially those with Irish Protestant connections, of whom the most prominent was Hubert Gough, threatened to resign or accept dismissal rather than obey orders to conduct military operations against the unionists, and were privately encouraged from London by senior officers including Henry Wilson.

Although the Cabinet issued a document claiming that the issue had been a misunderstanding, Secretary of State for War J. E. B. Seely and Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) Field Marshal Sir John French were forced to resign after amending it to promise that the British Army would not be used against the Ulster loyalists.

The event contributed both to unionist confidence and to the growing Irish nationalist movement, convincing Irish nationalists that they could not expect support from the British Army in Ireland.

Background
In early 1912, the Liberal British government of H. H. Asquith had introduced the Third Home Rule Bill for Ireland, which proposed the creation of an autonomous Irish Parliament in Dublin. Unionists had objected to being under the jurisdiction of the proposed Dublin Parliament, and Ulster Unionists founded the Ulster Volunteers (UVF) paramilitary group in 1912, aided by a number of senior retired British officers, to fight if necessary against the British government and/or against a future Irish Home Rule government as proposed by the bill.

In September 1913, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), John French, had expressed his concerns to the government and to the King (who had also asked Asquith for his views) that the British Army, if ordered to act against the UVF, might split, with some serving officers even siding with the Ulster Unionists, given that many shared the same view of preserving and defending a Protestant British Empire and believed Home Rule for mainly Catholic Ireland would threaten it. Major-General Henry Hughes Wilson, Director of Military Operations, was in regular contact with Opposition leaders (including Bonar Law) and with retired officers who supported the Volunteers.

Paget's orders
To deal with the threat of violence from the UVF should the Home Rule Bill be passed in the British Parliament, Chief of the General Staff (CIGS) Field Marshal Sir John French and Secretary of State for War J. E. B. Seely summoned General Sir Arthur Paget, Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, for talks at the War Office in October 1913. Paget's letter (19 October) suggests that he wanted "partial mobilisation" while Seely wrote to the Prime Minister (24 October) about the potential use of General Nevil Macready, who had experience of crowd control during the Tonypandy riots in 1910, and had been consulted by Birrell about the use of troops in the Belfast riots of 1912. In October 1913, Seely sent Macready to report on the police in Belfast and Dublin.

Intelligence reported that the UVF (now 100,000 strong) might be about to seize the ammunition at Carrickfergus Castle. Political negotiations were deadlocked as John Redmond's Irish Parliamentary Party was only willing to offer Ulster an opt-out from Home Rule for up to six years (i.e., until after the next general election), whereas the Ulster Unionists, led by Edward Carson, wanted a permanent opt-out. Asquith set up a five-man Cabinet Committee, chaired by Lord Crewe (who soon fell ill), and consisting of John Simon, Augustine Birrell (Chief Secretary for Ireland), Seely, and Winston Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty). Churchill, who spoke at Bradford (14 March) to say that there were "worse things than bloodshed, even on an extended scale" and "Let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof", and Seely appear to have been courting some kind of confrontation with the UVF.

Paget was ordered to prepare to deploy troops to prevent "evil-disposed persons" seizing weapons, and summoned to London for further instructions. Seely obtained French's compliance by repeatedly assuring him of the accuracy of intelligence that the UVF might march on Dublin. The plan was to occupy government buildings, to repel any assaults by the UVF and to guard the armouries at Omagh, Enniskillen, Armagh, Dundalk and Carrickfergus to prevent thefts of weapons. Six different contingencies were discussed, including armed resistance to the troops as they moved to protect the arms depots. Seely also promised Paget reinforcements "... to the last man ..." to uphold the law in Ireland. In the event of a railway strike, or other obstacle, Churchill offered transport of forces by the Royal Navy.

The politicians later claimed that at the meeting when Paget arrived in London, they merely gave verbal amplification to orders which he had already received from the War Office, but Asquith later admitted that this was untrue; at the meeting Paget was also told to send troops to Newry (an old, empty barracks with no stores) and Dundalk, both in Irish nationalist areas and so unlikely to be seized by the UVF, but of strategic importance in any move to bring Ulster under military control. It was later suggested (a claim believed by Sir James Fergusson, Charles Fergusson's son) that the move to deploy troops may have been a "plot" by Churchill and Seely to goad the loyalists into a rebellion which would then be put down, although this view is not universally held.

On the evening of 18 March, Paget wired Major-General Lovick Friend that the troop movements were to be completed by dawn on Sunday 31 March. Paget was summoned to another meeting on 19 March at which Seely declared that the government was pressing ahead with Home Rule and had no intention of allowing civil war to break out, suggesting that the UVF were to be crushed if they attempted to start one. Prince Louis of Battenberg (First Sea Lord) was also at the meeting, as that day the 3rd Battle Squadron was ordered to steam to Lamlash on the Firth of Clyde. The following night Churchill told French that his ships would have Belfast in flames in 24 hours, while other vessels were ready to help deploy troops to Ulster (in case of a strike by loyalist railwaymen). That evening, after Carson had stormed out of a Commons debate and departed for Ulster, where he was expected to declare a provisional government, Asquith, Seely, Churchill, Birrell, Field Marshal French, and General Paget had an emergency meeting at 10 Downing Street where Asquith insisted that extra infantry be sent to defend the artillery at Dundalk, which French wanted to withdraw. Seely claimed that a unionist coup was imminent in Ulster, although no trace of his intelligence survives.

Resignations
Paget travelled to Dublin that night in a state of high excitement, having been given no written orders (it is unclear whether this was because the politicians were reluctant to put anything in writing).

The next morning (Friday 20 March), Paget addressed Generals Rolt, Cuthbert, Gough, and Fergusson (GOC 5th Infantry Division), and three staff officers, at his Parkgate Street H.Q. in Dublin. Three different accounts exist (written by Paget, by Fergusson, and by Gough in his memoirs Soldiering On), but it is clear that Paget exacerbated the situation. By Gough's account, he said that "active operations were to commence against Ulster". Paget then claimed that he had obtained "concessions" from Seely, namely that officers who lived in Ulster would be permitted to "disappear" for the duration, and that other officers who refused to serve against Ulster would be dismissed rather than being permitted to resign. French, Paget, and Adjutant-General Spencer Ewart had indeed (on 19 March) agreed to exclude officers with "direct family connections" to Ulster, and to dismiss other officers who refused to participate. Paget told Gough, who queried whether "disappear" meant absence with or without leave, and who had a family connection to Ulster but did not live there, that he could expect no mercy from "his old friend at the War Office" (John French). Richard Holmes wrote that in effectively offering his officers an ultimatum, Paget was acting foolishly, as the majority might simply have obeyed if simply ordered north. Paget ended the meeting by ordering his officers to speak to their subordinates and then report back. Fergusson collared Gough and one of the infantry brigadiers, and warned that the Army must hold together at all costs, and that he himself would obey orders. Gough said that he would not, and went off to speak to the officers of the 5th Lancers (one of the regiments under his command) and also sent a telegram to his brother Johnnie, Haig's Chief of Staff at Aldershot. Gough did not attend the second meeting in the afternoon, at which Paget confirmed that the purpose of the move was to overawe Ulster rather than fight. No provision was made for enlisted men who had conscientious objections. The deployment orders were headed "'Duty as ordered – Active Operations in Ulster", and Gough later suggested that "active operations" sounded as if it were much more than a cautionary protective deployment.

Gough offered the officers under his command at nearby Marlborough Barracks (now McKee Barracks) the choice of resignation rather than fighting against the Ulster Volunteers. The ultimatum was passed on to the rest of Gough's 3rd Cavalry Brigade 25 miles away at the Curragh Camp.

On the evening of 20 March, Paget sent a telegram to the War Office in London announcing that almost all the officers of 5th Lancers intended to resign and the same was probably true of 16th Lancers. Seely replied, on behalf of the Army Council, telling Paget to suspend any senior officer who had offered to resign, and ordering Gough and two of his three colonels (the attitude of the third was unclear) to report to the War Office. A second telegram just before midnight confirmed that 57 officers preferred to accept dismissal (it was actually 61 including Gough ):

""

At the date of the incident, 70 officers were serving with the 3rd Cavalry Brigade. The officers were not technically guilty of mutiny, as they had resigned before refusing to carry out a direct order. As all were in Gough's brigade, and as they were informed of his reservations about Seely's orders, he was portrayed as central to the whole incident.

Chetwode was nominated to take Gough's place if necessary. Up to 100 other officers of Irish Command threatened to resign.

Results
General Sir Charles Fergusson, then commanding the 5th Division in Ireland, toured units on the morning of Saturday 21 March to ensure their future compliance with government policy. One of his officers said later that

"He [Fergusson] reminded us that although we must naturally hold private political views, officially we should not be on the side of any one political party. It was our duty to obey orders, to go wherever we were sent and to comply with instructions of any political party that happened to be in power. There was no sloppy sentiment; it was good stuff straight from the shoulder and just what we wanted."

Paget did the same, but his speech was described by a colonel as "absolutely unconvincing and inconclusive." However, Paget was able to conduct the precautionary moves planned on 18 and 19 March.

The elderly Field Marshal Roberts, who had recently exchanged "epithets" with French on the telephone over what he saw as French's collaboration with the government's "dastardly" plans, learned that Paget, in talking of "active operations" and in giving officers a chance to discuss hypothetical orders and threaten to resign, had been acting without authority and left a note for Hubert Gough to this effect. The King wrote to Asquith requesting that he be consulted before any further steps were taken.

Gough, summoned to the War Office, confirmed (Sunday 22 March) that he would have obeyed a direct order to move against Ulster. When he saw the King that evening, French, advised by Haldane (Lord Chancellor) that Paget should not have asked officers about "hypothetical contingencies," also threatened to resign if Gough were not reinstated. Paget was ordered to report to London, Macready was sent out to Belfast (but without official announcement) while Asquith informed the King that Paget had indeed exceeded his instructions, that only safeguarding of ammunition stores had been intended, that the naval deployment had been cancelled, and that there would be no further troop movement without consulting the King.

Asquith's Liberal government backed down, claiming an "honest misunderstanding." At French's suggestion Seely obtained a document from the Cabinet, stating that the Army Council were satisfied that the incident had been a misunderstanding, and that it was "the duty of all soldiers to obey lawful commands." Seely added two paragraphs, stating that the Government had the right to use "forces of the Crown" in Ireland or elsewhere, but had no intention of using force "to crush opposition to the Home Rule Bill." It is unclear whether this—amending a Cabinet document without Cabinet approval—was an honest blunder on Seely's part or whether he was encouraged to do so and then made a scapegoat. Gough insisted on adding a further paragraph clarifying that the Army would not be used to enforce Home Rule on Ulster, to which French concurred in writing. Wilson, Roberts and French had been leaking information to the press throughout the Incident. Gough promised to keep the 23 March Treaty confidential, but it soon leaked to the press—it appears that both Gough and French leaked it to Gwynne of the Morning Post, while Wilson leaked it to Leo Amery and Bonar Law.

The matter was debated in the Commons at length on 23 and 25 March. Asquith (25 March) publicly repudiated the "peccant paragraphs" which had been added to the Cabinet statement, and French, the Adjutant-General Spencer Ewart and Seely had to resign.

About a month later, on 24 April the Ulster Volunteers covertly landed about 24,000 rifles at night in the "Larne gun-running" incident. Its leaders considered that raiding the army's Ulster armouries would have lessened the public's goodwill towards it in Britain.

Labour and radical opinion was outraged that the Army, apparently happy enough to suppress industrial unrest, had been allowed to prevent the use of force in Ulster.

The event contributed both to unionist confidence and to the growing Irish separatist movement, convincing nationalists that they could not expect support from the British army in Ireland. In turn, this naturally increased nationalist support for its paramilitary force, the Irish Volunteers. While the Home Rule Bill was approved by the House of Commons on 25 May, the growing fear of civil war in Ireland led on to the government considering some form of partition of Ireland in July 1914 by an amending Bill; further discussions at the Buckingham Palace Conference could not solve the arguments about partition. The main Bill received the Royal Assent on 18 September, but was also suspended for the duration of the First World War.

Cited works and further reading

 * Primary

 * Secondary
 * Beckett, Ian F. W. The Army and the Curragh Incident 1914 Bodley Head for the ARS, 1986
 * Blake, Robert. "The Curragh Incident". History Today (June 1956) 6#6 pp 395–402
 * Fergusson, Sir James The Curragh Incident, London, 1964.
 * O'Brien, William MP (1923) The Irish Revolution; Chapter IX
 * Ryan, A. P. Mutiny at the Curragh, London, 1956.
 * O'Brien, William MP (1923) The Irish Revolution; Chapter IX
 * Ryan, A. P. Mutiny at the Curragh, London, 1956.

title: Curragh incident


text:
User talk:Topbanana/Reports/This is a double redirect

BTW Someone (Timwi?) made a bot to fix them. -- User:Docu

 * Yup - I suspect I've only found so many because I'm using a slightly different method of detecting them than Timwi. I've left a message asking if he'd like to compare notes. - TB 13:20, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

 * Maybe it that he fixed them ... ;) .. BTW he fixes quite a few in the talk namespace (which generally don't get checked) and where it doesn't matter that much if they don't redirect. -- User:Docu

A lot of these seem to be unused redirects to a page which was later moved. Any idea how many?--Henrygb 11:17, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)

 * The raw list (somewhat tidied and filtered for presentation here) held 1700 entries, but I've no easy way of picking up their provenance. Timwi seems to be the resident double-redirect expert - see if he knows? - TB 12:47, Jul 30, 2004 (UTC)


text:
Horatio Bottomley

Horatio William Bottomley (23 March 1860 – 26 May 1933) was an English financier, journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament. He is best known for his editorship of the popular magazine John Bull, and for his nationalistic oratory during the First World War. His career came to a sudden end when, in 1922, he was convicted of fraud and sentenced to seven years' imprisonment.

Bottomley spent five years in an orphanage before beginning his career, aged 14, as an errand boy. Subsequent experience as a solicitor's clerk gave him a useful knowledge of English law, which he later put to effective use in his court appearances. After working as a shorthand writer and court reporter, at 24 he founded his own publishing company, which launched numerous magazines and papers, including, in 1888, the Financial Times. He overreached with an ambitious public flotation of his company, which led to his first arraignment on fraud charges in 1893. Despite evidence of malpractice, Bottomley, who defended himself, was acquitted. He subsequently amassed a fortune as a promoter of shares in gold-mining companies.

In 1906 Bottomley entered parliament as the Liberal Party member for Hackney South. In the same year, he founded the popular magazine John Bull, which became a platform for Bottomley's trenchant populist views. Financial extravagance and mismanagement continued to blight his career, and in 1912 he had to resign from parliament after being declared bankrupt. The outbreak of war in 1914 revived his fortunes; as a journalist and orator, Bottomley became a leading propagandist for the war effort, addressing well over 300 public meetings. His influence was such that it was widely expected that he would enter the War Cabinet, although he received no such offer.

In 1918, having been discharged from bankruptcy, Bottomley re-entered parliament as an Independent member. In the following year, he launched his fraudulent "Victory Bonds" scheme which, when exposed, led to his conviction, imprisonment and expulsion from parliament. Released in 1927, he attempted unsuccessfully to relaunch his business career and eked out a living by lecturing and appearances in music halls. His final years before his death in 1933 were spent in poverty.

Family background and childhood
Bottomley was born on 23 March 1860, at 16 Saint Peter's Street, Bethnal Green in London, the second child and only son of William King Bottomley, a tailor's cutter, and Elizabeth, née Holyoake. William Bottomley's background is obscure, but Elizabeth belonged to a family of well-known radical agitators—her brother George Jacob Holyoake was a founder of the Secularist movement and in later life a leading figure in the growth of Co-operative societies.

Among Holyoake's close associates was Charles Bradlaugh, who founded the National Republican League and became a controversial Member of Parliament. A longstanding friendship between Bradlaugh and Elizabeth Holyoake led to rumours that he, not William Bottomley, was Horatio's biological father—a suggestion that Bottomley, in later life, was prone to encourage. The evidence is circumstantial, mainly based on the marked facial resemblance between Bradlaugh and Bottomley.

William Bottomley died in 1864 and Elizabeth a year later. Horatio and his elder sister, Florence, were initially looked after by their uncle William Holyoake, an artist living in the London district of Marylebone. After a year they were boarded out to foster-parents, at their uncle George Jacob's expense. This arrangement lasted until 1869 when Florence was formally adopted by her foster-family. At this point Holyoake felt unable to continue supporting Horatio financially, and arranged for him to be admitted to Josiah Mason's orphanage in Erdington, Birmingham. This was Horatio's home for the following five years. Some biographers have emphasised the cruelty and humiliation of his time there; while discipline was certainly harsh, Horatio received a useful basic education, and won prizes for sporting activities. In later life he showed no resentment towards the institution, which he often visited, telling the children that "any success I have achieved in life started at this place."

In 1874, when Horatio was 14 and due to leave the orphanage, he ran away without waiting for the formalities. His aunt Caroline Praill—his mother's sister—who lived in nearby Edgbaston, gave him a home, while he worked as an errand boy in a Birmingham building firm. This arrangement lasted only a few months before Horatio, impatient to be reunited with his sister from whom he had been separated for six years, went to London where he began an apprenticeship with a wood engraver.

First steps
Bottomley soon gave up his apprenticeship, and after a series of humdrum jobs found work in the offices of a City firm of solicitors. Here he picked up a working knowledge of English legal procedures and was soon carrying a workload far exceeding the normal duties of an office junior. With his uncle's encouragement he learned shorthand at Pitman's College, a skill which helped him to get a better job with a larger legal firm. He also came into closer contact with the Holyoake circle, where he acted as an unpaid assistant in the group's publishing activities. He met Bradlaugh, who encouraged the young man to read more widely and introduced him to the ideas of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley and John Stuart Mill. Bottomley was strongly influenced by Bradlaugh, whom he considered his political and spiritual mentor.

As Bottomley emerged from adolescence to maturity he began to show signs of the characteristics that would be much in evidence in his later life: greed for fleshly pleasures, a thirst for fame, spontaneous generosity, combined with a charm that, according to his biographer Julian Symons, could "tempt the banknotes out of men's pockets".

In 1880 Bottomley married Eliza Norton, the daughter of a debt collector. Bottomley's biographers have tended to regard this early, unambitious marriage as a mistake on his part; she was not equipped, intellectually or socially, to help him advance in the world. They had a daughter, Florence, who married firstly American millionaire Jefferson Davis Cohn,  and secondly successful South African planter Gilbert Moreland. In the year of his marriage, Bottomley left his job to become a full-time shorthand writer for Walpole's, a firm that provided recording and transcription services for the law courts. His competence impressed his employers sufficiently for them, in 1883, to offer him a partnership, and the firm became Walpole and Bottomley.

Publishing entrepreneur
Bottomley's association with Bradlaugh had awakened his interests in publishing and politics, and in 1884 he launched his first entrepreneurial venture, a magazine called the Hackney Hansard. This journal recorded the business of Hackney's local "parliament"—essentially a debating society that mirrored the proceedings at Westminster. Advertisements from local tradesmen kept the paper mildly profitable. Bottomley produced a sister-paper, the Battersea Hansard, covering that borough's local parliament, before merging the two into The Debater.

In 1885 he formed the Catherine Street Publishing Association and, using borrowed capital, acquired or started several magazines and papers. These included, among others, the Municipal Review, a prestigious local government publication; Youth, a boys' paper on which Alfred Harmsworth, the future press magnate Lord Northcliffe, worked as a sub-editor; and the Financial Times. The last-named was set up to rival the Financial News, London's first specialist business paper, which had been founded in 1884 by Harry Marks, a former sewing-machine salesman. In 1886 Bottomley's company acquired its own printing works through a merger with the printing firm of MacRae and Co., and after the absorption of another advertising and printing firm, became MacRae, Curtice and Company.

At the age of 26, Bottomley became the company's chairman. His advance in the business world was attracting wider notice, and in 1887 he was invited by the Liberal Party in Hornsey to be their candidate in a parliamentary by-election. He accepted, and although defeated by Henry Stephens, the ink magnate, fought a strong campaign which won him a congratulatory letter from William Gladstone. His business affairs were proceeding less serenely; he quarrelled with his partner Douglas MacRae, and the two decided to separate. Bottomley described the "Quixotic impulse" that led him to let MacRae divide the assets: "He was a printer, and I was a journalist—but he took the papers and left me the printing works".

Hansard Publishing Union
Undismayed by the loss of his papers, Bottomley embarked on an ambitious expansion scheme. On the basis of a lucrative contract to print the Hansard reports of debates in the Westminster parliament, at the beginning of 1889 he founded the Hansard Publishing Union Limited, floated on the London Stock Exchange with a capital of £500,000. Bottomley boosted the company's credentials by persuading several notable City figures to join the company's board of directors. These included Sir Henry Isaacs, the Lord Mayor-elect of London, Coleridge Kennard, co-founder (with Harry Marks) of the London Evening News, and Sir Roper Lethbridge, the Conservative MP for Kensington North.

This board approved the purchase by Bottomley of several printing businesses—he used intermediaries to disguise his considerable personal profits from these transactions. He also persuaded the board to give him £75,000 as a down payment for some publishing firms in Austria for which he was negotiating, although the firms were not acquired. These outgoings and other expenses absorbed the Union's capital, and with few significant revenue streams it quickly ran out of money. Nonetheless, without any statement of accounts, in July 1890 Bottomley announced a profit for the year of £40,877 and declared a dividend of eight percent.

The funds for the dividend payment were raised by a debenture of £50,000. By the end of 1890, many City figures were suspicious of the Hansard Union, and were calling it "Bottomley's swindle". Despite Bottomley's outward optimism, in December 1890 the company defaulted on the payment of debenture interest and in May 1891, amid growing rumours of insolvency, the debenture holders petitioned for the company's compulsory winding-up. In the same month Bottomley, who had taken at least £100,000 from the company, filed a petition for bankruptcy. Under examination by the Official Receiver, he could not say where the money had gone and professed total ignorance of the company's book-keeping. After further enquiries, the Board of Trade instituted prosecutions for fraud against Bottomley, Isaacs and two others.

The trial began in the High Court of Justice on 30 January 1893, before Sir Henry Hawkins; Bottomley conducted his own defence. To most observers the case against him seemed impregnable. It was established that, through his nominees, Bottomley had repeatedly bought companies for far less than the prices approved by the Hansard Union directors, and had pocketed the difference. Bottomley did not deny this, insisting that use of nominees was an accepted commercial practice and that his actual profits had been much smaller than reported; his expenses, he said, had been enormous.

He was helped in his case by the slackness with which the prosecution presented its evidence, and their failure to call key witnesses. He was further helped by the indulgence which Hawkins showed him, and by his own convincing oratory. The essence of his argument was that he was the victim of machinations by the Official Receiver and the Debenture Corporation, who had been determined to win prestige by bringing Bottomley down and wrecking his company. On 26 April, after Hawkins had summed up massively in his favour, Bottomley was acquitted, along with the other defendants.

Company promoter, newspaper proprietor, would-be politician
The Hansard Union case, far from damaging Bottomley's reputation, had left a general impression that he was a financial genius. He avoided the stigma of bankruptcy by arranging a scheme of repayment with his creditors, and swiftly embarked on a new career promoting Western Australian gold mining shares. The discovery of gold in Kalgoorlie and adjoining areas in the early 1890s had created an easily exploitable investment boom; as Bottomley's biographer Alan Hyman observes, "A hole in the ground ... could be boosted into a very promising gold-mine, and investors only found that they had backed a loser after the mine had been floated as a public company and they had paid hard cash for their shares".

By 1897, through skilful exploitation of demand and by frequent reconstruction of failing companies, Bottomley had accumulated a considerable personal fortune. It was, the historian A.J.A. Morris asserts, "a truly amazing success story, the product of reckless audacity, astonishing energy, and extreme good fortune". Bottomley won plaudits when he announced that he would pay £250,000 to the creditors of the Hansard Union; the bulk of this payment was offered in shares in one or other of his mining promotions. As his wealth increased, Bottomley adopted an increasingly ostentatious lifestyle. In London he lived in a luxurious apartment in Pall Mall. He took numerous mistresses, whom he visited in several discreet flats in different districts of London. He owned several racehorses, which achieved prestigious victories—the Stewards' Cup at Goodwood, and the Cesarewitch at Newmarket—but he often lost large sums through unwise bets. Quite early in his rise to wealth he bought a modest property in Upper Dicker, near Eastbourne in East Sussex. He called it "The Dicker", and over the years extended and developed it into a large country mansion, where he entertained extravagantly.

Bottomley had retained his parliamentary ambitions and in 1890, before the Hansard Union crash, had been adopted as the Liberal candidate for North Islington. According to Symons, when he resigned the candidature on the commencement of bankruptcy proceedings, he had the constituency in his pocket. By 1900 his star was again in the ascendant, and he was invited by the Hackney South Liberals to be their candidate in that year's general election. He lost by only 280 votes, after a bitterly fought campaign in which Bottomley was described in a newspaper article as a "bare-faced swindler ... [whose] ... place is at the Old Bailey, not at Westminster". He was subsequently awarded £1,000 libel damages against the writer, Henry Hess.

By the turn of the 19th–20th centuries the boom in speculative shares had abated; some of Bottomley's fellow promoters, such as Whitaker Wright, were facing charges of fraud and misrepresentation. Bottomley ceased his operations, and resumed his earlier role of newspaper proprietor. In 1902 he bought a failing London evening paper, The Sun, to which he contributed a regular column, "The World, the Flesh and the Devil". Another feature was Bottomley's employment of celebrity guest editors for special editions; among these were the comedian Dan Leno, the cricketer Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji and the labour leader Ben Tillett.

The paper was not a financial success, and Bottomley sold it in 1904. He had not given up altogether on speculative money-making schemes, and in 1905 began an association with the financier Ernest Hooley. Among their joint enterprises was the promotion of the defunct, dry Basingstoke Canal as a major inland waterway, the "London and South-Western Canal". Bottomley later made a substantial out-of-court settlement of an action brought by investors who had bought worthless shares in the canal.

Parliament, John Bull, bankruptcy
In the general election of January 1906 Bottomley was again the Liberal candidate for Hackney South. After a vigorous campaign he defeated his Conservative opponent by more than 3,000 —the largest Liberal majority in London, he informed the House of Commons in his maiden speech on 20 February 1906. According to Hyman, this speech was received in "chilling silence" by a House that was well aware of Bottomley's chequered reputation.

Over the following months and years, he overcame much of the initial hostility, partly by his self-deprecating good humour (as when he described himself as "more or less honourable") but also because his populist approach to legislation was attractive. He proposed rational reforms of the betting industry and of licensing hours and the introduction of state Old Age Pensions. Extra revenues could be raised, he suggested, by stamp duty on share transfers, taxes on foreign investment, and by appropriating dormant bank balances. He drew the government's attention to the long hours worked by domestic servants, and introduced a private bill limiting the working day to eight hours. He privately confided to the journalist Frank Harris that his ambition was to become Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Alongside his parliamentary duties, Bottomley was engaged in launching his biggest and boldest publishing venture, the weekly news magazine John Bull, half of the initial capital for which was provided by Hooley. From its first issue on 12 May 1906 John Bull adopted a tabloid style that, despite occasional lapses in taste, proved immensely popular. Among its regular features, Bottomley revived his "The World, the Flesh and the Devil" column from The Sun, and also adapted that paper's slogan: "If you read it in John Bull, it is so". Bottomley persuaded Julius Elias, managing director of Odhams Limited, to handle the printing, but chaotic financial management meant that Odhams were rarely paid. This situation was resolved when the entire management of the magazine, including the handling of all receipts and payments, was transferred to Elias, leaving Bottomley free to concentrate on editing and journalism. Circulation rose rapidly, and by 1910 had reached half a million copies.

In June 1906 Bottomley announced the John Bull Investment Trust, in which, for a minimum subscription of £10, investors could share "that special and exclusive information which is obtainable only as the result of extensive City experience". Bottomley's earlier City activities were coming under scrutiny, particularly the multiple reconstructions of his now-bankrupt Joint Stock Trust Company. After a long investigation, which Bottomley did all he could to frustrate, in December 1908 he was summoned to appear at the Guildhall Justice Room, before a court of aldermen. As with the Hansard prosecution, the case against Bottomley appeared overwhelming; share issues in the Joint Stock Trust had been repeatedly re-issued, perhaps as many as six times. Once again Bottomley succeeded in obscuring the details and, by the power of his courtroom oratory, persuaded the court that the summons should be dismissed.

One of the prosecuting team at the Guildhall observed that it would be a long time before anyone risked another prosecution against Bottomley: "But he might ... grow careless, and then he will fail". Despite the adverse publicity, Bottomley was returned by the electors of Hackney South at each of the two 1910 general elections; his tactics included recruiting men in boots tipped and heeled with iron, who marched outside his opponent's meetings and rendered the speeches inaudible. In June 1910 he founded the John Bull League, with a mission to promote "commonsense business methods" into government; readers of the magazine could join the League for a shilling (5p) a year. Although still nominally a Liberal, Bottomley had become a trenchant critic of his party, and often aligned himself with the Conservative opposition in attacking Asquith's government.

Bottomley's parliamentary ambitions were suddenly halted in 1912 when he was successfully sued for £49,000 by one of his Joint Stock Trust victims. Unable to pay, and with massive debts, he was bankrupted with liabilities totalling £233,000. Since bankrupts are ineligible to sit in the House of Commons, he had to resign his seat; after his departure, the future Lord Chancellor, F. E. Smith, wrote that "[h]is absence from the House of Commons has impoverished the public stock of gaiety, of cleverness, of common sense". Before his bankruptcy, Bottomley had ensured that his main assets were legally owned by relatives or nominees, and was thus able to continue his extravagant lifestyle. John Bull remained an ample source of funds, and Bottomley boasted that although nominally bankrupt, "I never had a better time in my life—plenty of money and everything else I want as well".

Sweepstakes and lotteries
After leaving the House of Commons, Bottomley denounced Parliament in the pages of John Bull as a "musty, rusty, corrupt system" that urgently needed replacement. Through his newly formed Business League he addressed large crowds as he called for government run by businessmen not politicians. As always, Bottomley's lifestyle required fresh sources of income, and in 1912 John Bull began to organise competitions for cash prizes. Bottomley successfully sued the secretary of the Anti-Gambling League for suggesting that many of the prizewinners were John Bull nominees or employees, but received only a farthing in damages. These competitions helped to raise the magazine's circulation to 1.5 million.

In 1913 Bottomley met a Birmingham businessman, Reuben Bigland, and together they began running large-scale sweepstakes and lotteries, operated from Switzerland to circumvent English law. Again doubts arose about the genuineness of declared winners; the winner of the £25,000 sweepstake for the 1914 Derby proved on enquiry to be the sister-in-law of one of Bottomley's close associates. Bottomley insisted this was a coincidence; years later, it was revealed that all but £250 of the prize had been paid into a bank account controlled by Bottomley.

First World War: orator and propagandist
Bottomley initially misread the international crisis that developed during the summer of 1914. After the murder of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28 June in Sarajevo, allegedly with Serbian complicity, John Bull described Serbia as "a hotbed of cold-blooded conspiracy and subterfuge", and called for it to be wiped from the map of Europe. When Britain declared war on the Central Powers on 4 August, Bottomley quickly reversed his position, and within a fortnight was demanding the elimination of Germany. John Bull campaigned relentlessly against the "Germhuns", and against British citizens carrying German-sounding surnames—the danger of "the enemy within" was a persistent Bottomley theme.

On 14 September 1914 he addressed a large crowd at the London Opera House, the first of many mass meetings at which he deployed his trademark phrase, "the Prince of Peace, (pointing to the Star of Bethlehem) that leads us on to God"—words which according to Symons moved many hearts. At the "Great War Rally" at the Royal Albert Hall on 14 January 1915, Bottomley was fully in tune with the national temper when he proclaimed: "We are fighting all that is worst in the world, the product of a debased civilisation".

During the war, in his self-appointed role as spokesman for the "man in the street", Bottomley addressed more than 300 public meetings, in all parts of the country. For recruitment rallies he provided his services free; for others, he took a percentage of the takings. His influence was enormous; the writer D. H. Lawrence, who detested Bottomley, thought that he represented the national spirit and that he might become prime minister.

In March 1915 Bottomley began a regular weekly column for the Sunday Pictorial. On 4 May, after the sinking of the Lusitania, he used this column to label the Germans as "unnatural freaks", and called for their extermination. Britain's war effort, he maintained, was being hampered by squeamish politicians; he reserved particular venom for the Labour Party leaders, Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald, who opposed the war, and demanded they be tried for high treason. Macdonald's riposte—to label Bottomley "a man of doubtful parentage who had lived all his life on the threshold of jail"—backfired when the latter published Macdonald's birth certificate which showed that the Labour leader was himself illegitimate. Bottomley also criticized the neutrality policy of the United States, arguing the USA was using the war to increase its economic power at the expense of the European powers. Bottomley launched a series of attacks on President Woodrow Wilson that lasted until the US entered the war in 1917.

Although the government was wary of Bottomley it was prepared to make use of his influence and popularity. In April 1915 the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, asked him to speak to shipworkers on the River Clyde, who were threatening industrial action. After Bottomley's intervention the strike was averted. In 1917 he visited the front in France, where, after dining with Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, he was a considerable success with the troops; his later visit to the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow was a similar success. He hoped that these morale-boosting activities would lead to a formal government position, but although from time to time there were rumours of a Cabinet post, no appointment was announced. In the later stages of the war Bottomley was a regular critic of the National War Aims Committee (NWAC), a cross-party parliamentary body formed in 1917 to revitalise Britain's commitment to victory and to underline the justice of its cause. Bottomley described the committee as "a dodge for doctoring public opinion", and in January 1918 told Lloyd George, who had become prime minister in December 1916, that NWAC had failed in its purpose and should be replaced by a Director of Propaganda—but to no avail.

Parliament again
Although in 1912 Bottomley had expressed contempt for parliament, he privately hankered to return. When the war ended in November 1918 and a general election was announced, he knew that to be a candidate in that election he needed a discharge from his bankruptcy. A payment of £34,000 in cash and bonds, and some hasty reorganisation of outstanding debts, was sufficient for an acquiescent Official Receiver to grant the discharge just in time for Bottomley to hand in his nomination papers in Hackney South. In the general election on 14 December 1918 he stood as an Independent, under the slogan "Bottomley, Brains and Business", and achieved a massive victory, with almost 80 per cent of the votes cast. "I am now prepared to proceed to Westminster to run the show", he informed a local newspaper. He would be, he said, the "unofficial prime minister ... watching the government's every move" to ensure that it acted in the interests of "our soldiers, sailors and citizens".

The 1918 parliament was dominated by Lloyd George's Liberal–Conservative coalition, which faced a fragmented and unorganised opposition. In May 1919 Bottomley announced the formation of his "People's League", which he hoped would develop into a fully fledged political party with a programme opposing both organised labour and organised capital. No mass movement emerged, but Bottomley joined with other Independent MPs to form the Independent Parliamentary Group, with a distinct policy stance including the enforcement of war reparations, the superiority of Britain over the League of Nations, exclusion of undesirable aliens, and "the introduction of business principles into government". The group was reinforced through by-election victories of other Independents—including Charles Frederick Palmer, John Bull's deputy editor, until his premature death in October 1920.

Bottomley was, at least for a year or so, a diligent parliamentarian who spoke on a range of issues, and from time to time teased the government as when, during the Irish Troubles, he asked whether, "in view of the breakdown of British rule in Ireland, the government will approach America with a view to her accepting the mandate for the government of that country". On other occasions he helped the government, as when in January 1919, he was called upon in his role of "Soldier's Friend" to help pacify troops in Folkestone and Calais who were in a state of mutiny over delays in their demobilisation.

Downfall
In July 1919 Bottomley announced his "Victory Bonds Club", based on the government's latest issue of Victory Bonds. Normally, these bonds cost £5; in Bottomley's club, subscribers bought units for a minimum payment of £1, and participated in an annual draw for prizes—up to £20,000, he said—funded from accrued interest. Contrary to Bottomley's public statements, not all the money subscribed was used to buy bonds. He had ambitions to become a press baron, to rival such as the Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook.

In October 1919 he used War Bonds funds to buy two obscure newspapers, the National News and the Sunday Evening Telegram. The papers were not financially successful, and in 1921 Bottomley closed the Telegram and changed the name of the National News to Sunday Illustrated. To bolster its fortunes, he transferred his Sunday Pictorial column to the Illustrated, and mounted an expensive promotional campaign, but with little benefit. The paper languished, while Bottomley lost the large income and readership that went with the Pictorial. His fortunes declined further when, in 1920, Odhams revoked the pre-war partnership agreement and took full control of John Bull. Bottomley was made editor for life, but a year later Odhams terminated this arrangement with a final pay-off of £25,000, which ended Bottomley's connection with the paper.

Meanwhile, dogged by poor administration and inadequate accounting, the Victory Bonds Club was sliding into chaos. Public unease grew, and soon hundreds of subscribers were demanding their money back—slipshod record-keeping meant that some were repaid several times over. Bottomley's position worsened when he fell out with Bigland, after refusing to finance his former associate's scheme for turning water into petrol. The two had quarrelled during the war, when Bigland had attacked Bottomley in print. They had later reconciled, but after their second dispute Bigland turned vengeful. In September 1921 he published a leaflet describing the War Bond Club as Bottomley's "latest and greatest swindle". Against the advice of his lawyers, Bottomley sued for criminal libel, and brought other charges against Bigland of blackmail and extortion. The preliminary hearing, at Bow Street Magistrates' Court in October 1921, at which Bottomley's methods were revealed, proved disastrous to his credibility. Nevertheless, Bigland was committed for trial at the Old Bailey on the libel charge, and to Shropshire Assizes on charges of attempted extortion.

The libel trial began on 23 January 1922; to prevent further damaging disclosures in court, Bottomley's lawyers offered no evidence, and Bigland was discharged. The extortion case went ahead in Shrewsbury on 18 February 1922, at the end of which it took the jury only three minutes to find Bigland not guilty. Bottomley, himself now under police investigation, was ordered to pay the costs of the trial. A few days afterwards, he was summoned to appear at Bow Street, on charges of fraudulent conversion of Victory Bond Club funds. After a brief hearing he was committed for trial at the Old Bailey.

Final years
Bottomley's trial began on 19 May 1922, before Mr Justice Salter. As the case was beginning, Bottomley secured the agreement of the prosecuting counsel, Travers Humphreys, to a 15-minute adjournment each day so that he, Bottomley, could drink a pint of champagne, ostensibly for medicinal purposes. He faced 24 fraud charges, involving amounts totalling £170,000. The prosecution produced evidence that he had regularly used Victory Bonds Club funds to finance business ventures, private debts and his expensive lifestyle.

Bottomley, who defended himself, claimed that his legitimate expenses in connection with the club, and repayments made to Victory Bonds Club members, exceeded total receipts by at least £50,000: "I swear I have never made a penny out of it. I swear before God that I have never fraudulently converted a penny of the Club's money". The weight of evidence suggested otherwise; Salter's summing up, described by a biographer as "masterly; lucid and concise, yet complete", went heavily against Bottomley, and the jury required only 28 minutes to convict him on all but one of the charges. He was sentenced to seven years' penal servitude. Humphreys commented later: "It was not I that floored him, but Drink".

After the dismissal of his appeal in July, Bottomley was expelled from the House of Commons. The Leader of the House, Sir Austen Chamberlain, read out a letter in which Bottomley insisted that, however unorthodox his methods, he had not been guilty of conscious fraud; he accepted that his predicament was entirely his own fault. Chamberlain then moved Bottomley's expulsion, which was carried without dissent. One member expressed regret, "remembering the remarkable position which he [had] occupied in the country". Bottomley spent the first year of his sentence in Wormwood Scrubs where he sewed mailbags, and the remainder in Maidstone Prison where, although conditions were squalid, he was given lighter work. He was released on 29 July 1927, after serving just over five years, and returned to The Dicker, still his family home, owned at the time of his bankruptcy by his son-in-law, Jefferson Cohn.

Although now 67 years old and in indifferent health, Bottomley tried to resurrect his business career. He raised sufficient capital to start a new magazine, John Blunt, as a rival to John Bull, but the new venture lasted little more than a year before closing, having lost money from the start. In September 1929 he began an overseas lecture tour, which failed utterly, as did an attempt at a British tour during which he was received with indifference or hostility. By 1930 he was again bankrupt; his wife Eliza died that year, after which Bottomley's former son-in-law Jefferson Cohn (who owned it) evicted him from The Dicker. For the remaining years of his life he lived with his long-time mistress, the actress Peggy Primrose, whom Bottomley, in his years of riches, had vainly tried to promote to stardom.

Bottomley's last public venture was an engagement at the Windmill Theatre in September 1932, where he performed a monologue of reminiscences that, according to Symons, puzzled rather than amused his audience. Following a health breakdown, he lived with Primrose in quiet poverty until his final illness.

Death
Bottomley died at the Middlesex Hospital on 26 May 1933 at the age of 73, and his body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium a few days later. A large crowd heard the Reverend Basil Bourchier express the hope that "no one here today will forget what Mr Bottomley did to revive the spirits of our men at the Front". Four years later, in accordance with Bottomley's wishes, Primrose scattered his ashes on the Sussex Downs.

Appraisal
Bottomley's obituaries dwelt on the common theme of wasted talent: a man of brilliant natural abilities, destroyed by greed and vanity. "He had personal magnetism, eloquence, and the power to convince", wrote his Daily Mail obituarist. "He might have been a leader at the Bar, a captain of industry, a great journalist. He might have been almost anything". The Straits Times of Singapore thought that Bottomley could have rivalled Lloyd George as a national leader: "Though he deserved his fate, the news of his passing will awaken the many regrets for the good which he did when he was Bottomley the reformer and crusader and the champion of the bottom dog". A later historian, Maurice Cowling, pays tribute to Bottomley's capacity and industry, and to his forceful campaigns in support of liberty. In his sketch for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Morris delivers a different judgement: "[H]e claimed to serve the interests of others, but sought only his own gratification".

Among Bottomley's principal biographers, Hyman suggests that his financial fecklessness and disregard for consequences may have originated from his deprived background and sudden acquisition of wealth in the 1890s. "Success went to his head and he started spending money like a drunken sailor and could never break the habit." It was a wonder, says Hyman, that he stayed out of prison as long as he did. G. R. Searle speculates that Bottomley was protected from prosecution because of his knowledge of wider scandals in the government, particularly after Lloyd George's coalition assumed power in 1916. Symons acknowledges Bottomley's "wonderfully rich public personality" but suggests that there was no substance behind the presentation: throughout his adult life, Bottomley was "more a series of public attitudes than a person". Matthew Engel in The Guardian notes his ability to charm the public even while swindling them; one victim, cheated of £40,000, apparently insisted: "I am not sorry I lent him the money, and I would do it again". If London had had a mayor in those days, says Engel, Bottomley would have won in a landslide.

Cultural depictions

 * Actor Timothy West portrays Bottomley in the 1972–1973 miniseries The Edwardians.
 * Actor Patrick Mower portrays Bottomley in a radio play by Allen Saddler about him called Man of the People. It was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1986 and in June 2022 on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

Notes and references
Notes

Citations

Sources

title: Horatio Bottomley