Today in history: August 1

On this day: high mice, wounded sailors and scouting for publicity…

I’m starting a new format for my articles this week – I’ll still be digging out first-hand accounts from historical times and events, but in a shorter format, with a few little scenes each time relating to a specific day. You can still enjoy the back catalogue of more than 200 mostly longer pieces… and of course this will still alternate with Paul’s brilliant ‘A history of…’ series.

Three historical things for August 1…

A breath of fresh air, 1774

On 1st August 1774, British scientist, theologian and all-round polymath Joseph Priestley (who has cropped up in Histories briefly before, here and here) made his most famous discovery: oxygen. Well, there’s a long history of people isolating or identifying parts of what makes up air, back to 15th-century Leonardo da Vinci, 16th-century Michael Sendivogius and others. Plus Swedish scientist Carl Wilhelm Scheele actually isolated the gas in 1773 – but Priestley was quicker off the mark and was the first to publish a scientific account (Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, 1775–6) of what he called ‘dephlogisticated air’ (the name oxygen was invented by Antoine Lavoisier in 1778). In this era, many scientists thought combustible materials consisted of ‘phlogiston’, given off by burning, and a ‘dephlogisticated’ true element, called the calx. Actually, Priestley probably first isolated oxygen back in 1771, but didn’t realise it at the time. In Experiments and Observations, he wrote:

With this apparatus, after a variety of other experiments, an account of which will be found in its proper place, on the 1st of August, 1774, I endeavoured to extract air from mercurius calcinatus per se [mercury oxide… what surprized me more than I can well express, was, that a candle burned in this air with a remarkably vigorous flame… I was utterly at a loss how to account for it.

But the passage I particularly like is this evocative bit of self-experimentation (well, with the help of mice):

My reader will not wonder, that, after having ascertained the superior goodness of dephlogisticated air by mice living in it, and the other tests above mentioned, I should have the curiosity to take it myself. I have gratified that curiosity, by breathing it, drawing it through a glass siphon, and, by this means, I reduced a large jar full of it to the standard of common air. The feeling of it to my lungs was not sensibly different from that of common air; but I fancied that my breast felt peculiarly light and easy for some time afterwards. Who can tell but that, in time, this pure air may become a fashionable article in luxury. Hitherto only two mice and myself have had the privilege of breathing it.

Back in 1772, another of Joseph’s gaseous discoveries was “dephlogisticated nitrous air” – what we call nitrous oxide. Twenty years later, James Watt (of steam engine fame) invented a machine to generate it for medicinal use – but what really took off was recreational use, and soon ‘laughing gas parties’ were all the rage among the Georgian upper classes breathing it in from a bag, rather like the ‘fashionable’ use Priestley had imagined for pure oxygen. Here’s how our old friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge described the experience:

The first time I inspired the nitrous oxide, I felt a highly pleasurable sensation of warmth over my whole frame, resembling that which I remember once to have experienced after returning from a walk in the snow into a warm room. The only motion which I felt inclined to make, was that of laughing at those who were looking at me. My eyes felt distended, and towards the last, my heart beat as if it were leaping up and down. On removing the mouth-piece, the whole sensation went off almost instantly.

The glorious first, 1798

In the same era as those folk were having such a gas, Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) had his first big victory against Napoleon’s navy, at the Battle of the Nile, 1st–3rd August 1798, with the British splitting their fleet to surround the French – this victory would ensure Nelson’s fame. It wasn’t without cost, though, just like his previous engagements: back in 1794 he lost most of the sight in his right eye, in 1797 he had lost an arm, and now he received a head wound which affected the same eye again.

A lively eyewitness account by Scottish sailor John Nichol,¹ who was in the gun crew on HMS Goliath at the battle, tells the story of the events:

When we ceased firing I went on deck to view the state of the fleets, and an awful sight it was. The whole bay was covered with dead bodies, mangled, wounded, and scorched, not a bit of clothes on them except their trousers. There were a number of French, belonging to the French Admiral’s ship, the L’Orient, who had swam to the Goliath, and were cowering under her forecastle. Poor fellows! they were brought on board, and Captain Foley ordered them down to the steward’s room, to get provisions and clothing. One thing I observed in these Frenchmen quite different from anything I had before observed. In the American War, when we took a French ship, the Duke de Chartres, the prisoners were as merry as if they had taken us, only saying ‘Fortune de guerre – you take me today, I take you tomorrow.’ Those we now had on board were thankful for our kindness, but were sullen and as downcast as if each had lost a ship of his own… Thus terminated the glorious first of August, the busiest night in my life.

Scouting for boys, 1907

In the late 19th century there was a gathering trend for military-style training for both boys and girls – the Boys’ Brigade, for example, was founded in 1883 to drill discipline and Christian values into young people. In 1907, 50-year-old British Boer War hero Robert Baden-Powell (known as B-P), who had already written books on scouting skills, decided to test out some of his own ideas, setting out at the start of August 1907 for a week-long experimental camp on Brownsea Island off the coast of Dorset in southern England. The 21 boys he took were an eclectic mix of upper crust boys from public schools like Eton and Harrow and working-class local Boys’ Brigade members, plus his nine-year-old nephew Donald, and there was a packed timetable of activities, including forming patrols (Ravens, Bulls, Curlews and Wolves), making shelters, learning skills such as tying knots, lighting fires, navigation and cooking, ‘practical chivalry to women’, patriotism lessons and games, many of which are probably familiar to former Scouts today. Allegedly B-P wrote: “I was anxious to get away from outsiders, press reporters and other ‘vermin’, where I could try out the experiment without interruption.” This is somewhat disingenuous given that only a few months later he was on a speaking tour to promote his new (and most famous) book, Scouting for Boys, published the next year and heavily advertised in the press! His publisher Pearson even gave him £5000² to do these talks and was a key player in the early growth of the Scouting movement.

In May 1908, B-P wrote an account of the camp for The Scout magazine, and here is the gist:

The troop of boys was divided up into ‘Patrols’ of five, the senior boy in each being Patrol Leader. This organization was the secret of our success. Each Patrol Leader was given full responsibility for the behaviour of his patrol at all times, in camp and in the field. The patrol was the unit of work or play, and each patrol was camped in a separate spot. The boys were put ‘on their honour’ to carry out orders. Responsibility and competitive rivalry were thus at once established, and a good standard of development was ensured…

Every night one patrol went on duty as night picket – that is, drew rations of flour, meat, vegetables, tea, etc., and went out to some indicated spot to bivouac for the night. Each boy had his greatcoat and blankets, cooking-pot and matches. On arrival at the spot, fires were lit and suppers cooked, after which sentries were posted and bivouac formed. The picket was scouted by Patrol Leaders of other patrols and myself, at some time before eleven p.m., after which the sentries were withdrawn and picket settled down for the night.

We found the best way of imparting theoretical instruction was to give it out in short installments with ample illustrative examples when sitting round the camp-fire or otherwise resting, and with demonstrations in the practice hour before breakfast. A formal lecture is apt to bore the boys…

In the afternoon we would have a game, such as ‘deer-stalking’, in which one boy went off as the ‘deer’, with half a dozen tennis balls in his bag. Twenty minutes later four ‘hunters’ went off after him, following his tracks, each armed with a tennis ball. The deer, after going a mile or two, would hide and endeavour to ambush his hunters, and so get them within range; each hunter struck with his tennis ball was counted gored to death; if, on the other hand, the deer was hit by three of their balls he was killed.

Sadly only a decade later five of those original boys on the camp would face a sterner fate, losing their lives in the First World War (and a further one died later from gas poisoning). So it goes.

1. Albeit written much later in his 1822 book The Life and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner.

2. A vast sum of money equivalent to hundreds of thousands today.