It’s your Natal Day, Regency Style

by David William Wilkin

“It is the old girl's birthday, and that is the greatest holiday and reddest-letter day in Mr. Bagnet's calendar.” Charles Dickens, Bleak House Chapter 49, 1853.

This is not the only Dickensian reference we have to celebration of a birthday. 

From Dickens the Pickwick Papers 1836-1837, we have this:

“ "Never mind that," said the old gentleman; "you're much too fond of punch, Tom."

Tom Smart was just on the point of protesting that he hadn't tasted a drop since his last birthday, “

Regency Tea Party

And then there is the practice of giving flowers on a birthday:

“For instance, the recurrence of a birthday affords a suitable occasion for paying a compliment of a more marked character than mere words express. Birthday bouquets intended as offerings to young people, are most appropriate when composed of spring flowers-wild if possible.” Cassells Household Guide, New and Revised Edition (4 Vol.) c.1880.

Happy Birthday William Powell Frith

Though Dickens writes just at the beginning of the Victorian era, we can extrapolate that things he observed when young (Charles lived from 1812 to 1870) were customs that were also in place when he was older. Especially as some customs relating to birthdays were practiced for several centuries by the time of the Regency.

As mentioned in previous posts, the time of the English Regency, when George the III was mad and his son George (who would be King George IV) oversaw the government for his father was from 1811 to 1820. The culture of the period though, fashion, art, extends from an earlier time, and does not change until Victoria has been on the throne for a little while. For simplicity, if we look at this from 1788 when George was first mad, to 1837, when his son William died, we have a fifty year period that Charles Dickens knew well.

One in which birthdays, as the character Tom Smart above found a way to celebrate with some punch, were honored.

Birthdays have been celebrated for a long time. First in ancient Egypt, 3000 BC (still celebrated in modern Egypt as well, I am willing to wager, despite the country going through regime change.) First in Egypt and then in Babylonia the birth of male royalty was what was celebrated. The practice began after Menes united the Upper and Lower Kingdoms. These were elaborate feasts in which slaves, servants, and freedmen all took part. Even prisoners could be released from the jails.

Walter Frederick Osborne The Birthday Party

Plutarch writes how Cleopatra threw an immense birthday celebration for Mark Antony. (They deserved some happiness before their tragic end.) A few Cleopatras before, though her husband Ptolemy gave her for a birthday present the dismembered body of their son. (Cleo II)

After the invitation of the celebration of Birthdays by the Egyptians, we move on to ancient Greece. Often we think that the Romans took all that was Greek, but here we have the Greeks taking that which is Egyptian and Persian, it would seem. Persians made cakes. (In the Regency Era, Marie Antoinette would tell you that the French did as well.)

Why not, our ancient Greek ancestors thought, put Cake and Birthday together. Philochorus writes that Artemis’ birthday was celebrated on the sixth day of each month with a large honey cake. That would be twelve birthday celebrations a year. The cake was even topped with lighted candles. 

It was the Gods who were fortunate to have their birthdays celebrated monthly. Mere mortal women and children, no birthday party at all (chauvinism goes back a long way.) For the man of the house, though, the annual celebration there was nothing that was too lavish, even after death.

The Romans (remember, they steal everything) put a twist harkening back to the Egyptians. Important statesmen would find their Natal Day festivities national holidays. IN 44 BC Caesar rated an annual parade, circus performance, gladiators, a banquet and a play.

Then came Christianity. And birthday observances stopped.

It was equating entering the world with Original Sin, and since that was the day of your birth, why mark it as special. (One day they might even come up with Temperance...)

What was celebrated instead was the death days (not the birthdays) of the saints. These became their feast days. A saint is born when he/she passes into heaven.

Before the fourth century, it was heresy to try and figure out when JC was born. But after, the church decided they wanted to know, and thus with much serious discussion, we have Christmas.

The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ
Jean-Léon Gérôme

By the 12th century, parish churches were recording the birth dates of women and children. Now families were celebrating with annual parties and the birthday cake, along with candles reemerged. (I won’t argue that this was now the end of the Dark Ages as light was reintroduced.)

John Lorimar Grandmother's Birthday

The reemergence was first called the Kinderfeste. It began at dawn. The birthday child was greeted with a cake with the candles already lit. And these candles were changed to stay lit the entire day. A full day of partying.

Making a wish and blowing out the candles also comes from the Kinderfeste tradition. There was an old tradition, now gone of the Birthday Man. An elf who brought extra gifts to the birthday child. 

Now bringing it to the Regency. Jane, for all our Janeites, does not mention Birthday celebrations I went through 17 sources on daily life in Georgian times, and again no mention of the activity. Writers up to now may not have cared. But we do have some examples as noted above in Dickens. Whether it is Tom Smart taking a nip at every birthday to acknowledge the occasion, or the old girl who made of it a great celebration each year.

That suggests to me (though as you have read, we don't have much that is definitive) that should you have the chance to celebrate, and the means to do so, why would you not want to have a lavish affair like Cleopatra and Marc Antony. Certainly the Ton of the Regency was always looking for entertainments and here was a reason for it.

Research (partial)

Charles Panati Panati’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Thing, 1987

Sally Mitchell Daily Life in Victorian England, 1996

Maggie Lane Jane Austen’s World, 1996

Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, 1993

* * *

Editor's Choice: This post was originally posted on this blog, August 31, 2012.

Mr. Wilkin writes Regency Historicals and Romances, Ruritanian (A great sub-genre that is fun to explore) and Edwardian Romances, Science Fiction and Fantasy works. He is the author of the very successful Pride & Prejudice continuation; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence. He has several other novels set in Regency England including The End of the World and The Shattered Mirror. His most recent work is the humorous spoof; Jane Austen and Ghosts, a story of what would happen were we to make any of these Monsters and Austen stories into a movie.

And Two Peas in a Pod, a madcap tale of identical twin brothers in Regency London who find they must impersonate each other to pursue their loves.

The links for all locations selling Mr. Wilkin's work can be found at the webpage and will point you to your favorite internet bookstore: David’s Books, and at various Internet and realworld bookstores including the iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords.

He is published by Regency Assembly Press

And he maintains his own blog called The Things That Catch My Eye where the entire Regency Lexicon has been hosted these last months as well as the current work in progress of the full Regency Timeline is being presented.

You also may follow Mr. Wilkin on Twitter at @DWWilkin

Mr. Wilkin maintains a Pinterest page with pictures and links to all the Regency Research he uncovers at Pinterest Regency-Era

The days the world’s most powerful man, the richest man and smartest man came together

by David Wilkin

While such an occurrence probably happens often enough these days, Warren Buffet in a room with Stephen Hawking and the US President, perhaps, before mass transportation, the airplane, and instant telecommunications, this event would have been hard put to have taken place.



I should hazard that in the time of the Regency era, it hardly ever happened.

While researching previous Regency era novels, I developed a fascination for the early introduction of trains and railways. In The End of the World which is set in the exact area that rail tracks were laid down well ahead of train engines being invented, I had found that the practice was developed to haul copper from the mines to the coast. A theme shown in that book.

The research on early locomotion led me to learn of George Stephenson and his son Robert. Prior to this I had heard of Stephenson’s Rocket. Now I learned more about the locomotive engine that won the Rainhill Time Trials for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway of 1829.

The day our three greatest titled men on earth met was for the opening of that very railway, and it turned out to be fateful in many ways.

It certainly would have taken men of vision to realize that the steam engine had so many uses, including the change of how we felt about distance. That is a societal change that I would argue, though not here, altered the world. Prior to this event, the use of steam engines to power a means of transport, we were reliant on our feet, horses (camels, elephants, etc.) and shipping either by rowing, or wind powered. (Of course that last mode required water as well.)

The advent of steam which leads to the use of railways, I thought to make a centerpiece of a Regency story, but the events of September 15th, 1830 were so momentous that I had written three chapters in The Fastest Love on Earth before I realized that it was the predominant opening theme that brought my hero and heroine together.

Not only they, did I have attend this event, but in reality so too did the Prime Minister of England, Arthur Wellesley the Duke of Wellington.


One of the few investors, or owners if you will, of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the friend of the Duke and also the wealthiest man of the 19th century. The Marquess of Stafford, or George Granville Leveson-Gower was thus there with the most powerful man, Wellington.

With Wellington as the world’s most powerful man, Leveson-Gower as its richest, and Stephenson whose inventions fundamentally change the world as its smartest man, none could see that what they were doing that day would bring such a great change to all mankind, or the fall of the very government that had backed it within a matter of weeks.

While the government of Great Britain understood the event to be momentous enough that the Duke travelled north to participate, the success that railway travel became was not anticipated by the company at the time.

This new form of transport proved so successful that in the first six months of 1831, over 188 thousand passengers were carried on the trains. By the end of one full year from the start, September of 1831, nearly half a million travelled on the railway.

But the first day when these great men came together is what is important. The key additional personality that would cause the fall of Wellington’s government was that of William Husskisson.


On this momentous day, there were several political realities also taking place. The North was much different from London and the South and Wellington’s presence was not only to praise the achievement of the railway, but also to show that he was concerned with the people of the North.

Husskisson was the MP for Liverpool and had been a member of Wellington’s Cabinet. He had been Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. He resigned over the lack of representation for Manchester. He was thus very much involved in the political life of the North, representing one end of the railway, and concerned with the other end.

Now at this juncture, it was thought that Huskisson and Wellington would make amends and they would shake hands while the events of the day played out.

There were so many special attendees on the day of the event that several locomotives were put into service. There was also so much to do that things got started late. By 11, the trains were rolling.



All seemed as it should, a band had been playing and was on one of the cars pulled by the Northumbrian locomotive to continue playing. Behind the car with the band was a special car that Wellington and the most important of those invited that day were on. Not Husskisson, though.

After the late start the next thing to go wrong was a collision. The first day of rail travel on Earth (aside from some small time freight hauling) there was a crash. Two lines were being used that day and one train had a wheel jump the track. The train following, not able to fully determine that this one had stopped hit it, but no one was injured as the trains were not traveling very fast.

This was minor. A few miles later though, at Parkside, things turned the day of triumph into one mixed with tragedy.

Recognizing that people would not be used to any sort of vehicle moving so fast, speeds of 10 and fifteen miles an hour, the Liverpool and Manchester had printed flyers advising the celebrants to not disembark from their train cars and visit with the other passengers. This though was ignored.

Mr. Husskisson especially had reason to leave his car and walk to that of the Duke’s carriage attached to the Northumbrian. Should the two find common ground, it would mean much for both. Husskisson might return to the cabinet, while Wellington would get support in the North.

With an eye to reconciliation, Husskisson approached the Duke and the two shook hands. Even as this occurred, others saw that the Rocket locomotive was approaching on the parallel track. Soon the cry was taken up that an engine was coming and all needed to the clear the track. There were no steps up to the Duke’s car, as these were detachable and had not been deployed. When the oncoming train was within 80 feet all that remained on the tracks were William Holmes, The Prince Esterházy, and Husskisson.

All but Husskisson reached safety. The Member for Liverpool, and once again hopeful of joining the Wellington government was struck by the Rocket. His leg and thigh crushed. (The first day of passenger rail service, the first passenger rail accident.)

There were three doctors amidst the contingent of celebrants, one of whom was Henry Herbert Southey who most recent posting had been with the recently deceased King, George IV. One would believe the man to be a very accomplished doctor since he had been the physician to the king. Yet he and the other two, had no practical experience with such accidents.

As all became calm enough to think, George Stephenson proposed transporting the injured MP to Manchester as the trains were pointed that way. The cars behind the Northumbrian locomotive were detached, and Husskisson was placed on the band’s carriage, the band now turning to walk back to Liverpool. (As the day grew longer, a hard rain came as well and poured on these entertainers.)

The Northumbrian departed and worked up to speeds of 40 miles an hour, the fastest speed ever achieved. It did little to save Husskisson, who insisted to be carried to his friend’s home, Reverend Blackburne who lived at Eccles, 4 miles short of Manchester. While there, Husskisson became too traumatized to be operated on by the time competent surgeons arrived to assess the situation. He died sometime after nine PM.

During this time it took a while to have the trains with the celebrants continue their journey. The mobs of people began to get restless and remembered how much they disliked Wellington. They even pelted his car with vegetables.

The trains were to have made their round trip and finish by 4 PM, by 9 they still had not done so. The death of William Husskisson, and certainly the actions of the crowd that day would lead Wellington to decide that he could not return to the North for the funeral of the man. Husskisson was not only noted for his views in the North, but wanting to reconcile with Wellington. The Duke however, through his actions, or inactions after Husskisson’s death lost the support of those who were friends of the deceased lawmaker.

When Wellington decided not to attend the funeral of the man who had only moments before the cause of his demise, had shaken the Duke’s hand, it forced a breach in his support large enough that by two months from the opening of the railway and the fateful events of that day, there was a no confidence vote against him. He was replaced as Prime Minister by Earl Grey.

The beginning of modern transportation, the age of Steam, saw the end of Wellington’s government. If Husskisson had survived, or never been injured. If the trains had returned to course, or Wellington had journeyed back to the funeral. It is highly possible that the world would have known a different outcome, then what did occur.

What I see, when looking at the facts, and the ability to share them with my readers is that the truth is stranger than fiction. I don’t think it is possible to arrange for so much fodder for a good story, than what occurred on September 15th, 1830.

Research
Wolmar, Christian (2007). Fire & Steam
Garfield, Simon (2002). The Last Journey of William Huskisson

Mr. Wilkin writes Regency Historicals and Romances, Ruritanian and Edwardian Romances, Science Fiction and Fantasy. He is the author of the very successful Pride & Prejudice continuation; Colonel Fitzwilliam’s Correspondence.

His work can be found for sale at: David’s Books, and at various Internet and realworld bookstores including the iBookstore, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords.
He is published by Regency Assembly Press
And he maintains his own blog called The Things That Catch My Eye