|
 Feast day of St Peter the Apostle
St Peter (died c. 67) was one of the
Twelve Apostles
of Jesus Christ in the New
Testament. His birth name was Simon (Hebrew שמעון Šim'ôn,
Shim'on 'Hearkening; listening'), he was a fisherman, and was
given the nickname of 'Peter',
which means 'rock' in Greek
(Petros). Saint Paul generally called him Cephas or
Kephas, which is the Aramaic equivalent of the nickname.
Peter was the brother of Saint Andrew
the Apostle who led him to Christ. Roman Catholics believe him to be the
first Pope and to their church he is known as
'Prince of the Apostles'.
His patronage includes against frenzy,
bakers, butchers, clock makers,
cobblers, feet problems,
fever, fishermen, harvesters, locksmiths, longevity, net makers,
papacy, Popes, Rome, ship builders,
shipwrights, shoemakers, stone masons
and watch makers.
More on Peter on June 29, the
Feast day of Ss Peter and Paul.
Leonids meteor showers
(Nov 12 - 23
annually)
The celestial lightshow peaks on November 17
(qv).
Wuwuchim (Hopi) Fire Ceremony (Nov 5 - 21)
Hopi Prophecy sung at Wuwuchim in 1961
Roman
festivals The day 1 Dios dedicated
to the sun god by emperor Licinius
Feast
day of Ss Alphaeus and Zachaeus, Romanus and Barulas (Barula),
martyrs
Feast day of St Amandus of
Lérins
Feast day of St Constant
Feast day of the Dedication
of the Basilicas of Ss Peter and Paul, Apostles, Rome
(Curly passion-flower, Passiflora
serrata, is
today's plant, dedicated to these saints.)
Basilicas
of Saints
Peter and Paul
Feast day of St Guilminus
Feast day of St Hesychius
of Antioch
Feast day of St John Xoun
Feast day of St Karolina Kózkówna
Feast day of St Keverne
Feast day of St Leonard
Kimura
Feast day of St Mummolus
Feast day of St Odo,
Abbot of Cluni, confessor
(c. 878 - 18
November 942)
Feast day of St Oriculus and
Companions
Feast day of St Rose
Philippine Duchesne
Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne (August
29, 1769
- November 18, 1852),
a Catholic
nun, was
born in Grenoble,
France,
and died in
St
Charles, Missouri, USA. She, along with Madeline
Sophie Barat founded the Society of the Sacred Heart. She was
canonized on July
3, 1988,
by Pope John
Paul II.
More
Shop Saints
Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days
Ebisu-san Matsuri, Ebisu
Shrine, Hiroshima City, Japan (Nov 18 -
20)
"Festival dedicated to Ebisu-san, the god
of commerce, held, appropriately, at a shrine behind the Mitsukoshi
and Tenmaya department stores. Many shops take part by sell [sic]
bargain goods and street-stalls appear all over the area." Source
Carib Settlement Days,
Belize
(Nov 16
- 19)
Independence Day,
Morocco
Independence
Day, Latvia
(1918)
Commemoration of the birthday (1940) of Sultan Qaboos
bin Said, Oman.
(National
Holiday, Oman.)
Calvin
and Hobbes Day (1985)
The week before
Thanksgiving,
National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, USA
On which day of the week were you born? Find out here
1785 Sir
David Wilkie,
Scottish artist
1786
Carl Maria von Weber (d. 1826),
German
composer,
conductor,
pianist
and
critic.
Some sources give his
date of birth as
December 18.1787 Louis-Jacques Daguerre (d. 1851),
French theatrical scene painter (producer of panoramic dioramas),
physicist, inventor of the first practical process of photography, the
daguerrotype.
Through his Diorama, which
opened in the Rue du Faubourg-du-Temple in Paris in 1822, Daguerre
became very well known in Paris, even before his innovations in
photography.
Daguerreotypy, first shown on September 17,
1839, in Paris, was a method of capturing an
image projected by a camera obscura
onto silver-coated copper plates. Then the plates were sensitised
with iodine vapour, exposed in a camera, developed with mercury
vapour, and fixed with a solution of sodium thiosulfate, resulting
in a single, fixed image.
A
Thumbnail History of the Daguerreotype
More
 1797? Sojourner Truth
(self-given name of Isabella
Baumfree, aka Isabella
Van Wagener) (d. 1883),
whose 'Ar'n't I
a Woman?' speech (written by Frances Gage, feminist
activist) electrified an 1851
Akron, Ohio, USA, women's rights
convention; one of 13 children born to slave parents. At six feet tall, an imposing
figure, she spoke only Dutch till she was sold from her
family around the age of eleven.
Baumfree
settled in New York City, earning a living as a domestic worker for
several religious
communes, including the 'Kingdom
of Matthias' which became embroiled in a scandal of adultery and
murder. When, in 1843, she was inspired by some kind of spiritual
peak experience, Isabella Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner
Truth, walked throughout Long Island and Connecticut, and preached
"God's truth and plan for salvation".
Eventually arriving in
Northampton, MA, Sojourner joined the intentional
community the Northampton
Association for Education and Industry, where she met and worked
with abolitionists
such as William
Lloyd Garrison (founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society),
Frederick
Douglass and Olive Gilbert. (The latter helped edit her memoirs
which were published in 1850 as The Narrative
of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave.)
Truth eventually added
abolitionism and women's suffrage to her oratory; in her later life she became a noted
speaker for both the abolitionist movement and the women's rights movement.
The
Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave, at Amazon.com
1836 Sir
William Schwenck Gilbert (d. May
29, 1911),
English playwright, librettist and humourist best known for his
collaboration with Arthur
Sullivan
in comic operas; he was also a cartoonist.
On May 29, 1911, he was giving swimming lessons to two young women
at the lake on his property, Gram's Dyke, when one of them began to
flail around. Gilbert dived in to save her, but suffered a heart
attack in the middle of the lake.
1836 Cesare Lombroso (d. 1909), professor of psychiatry,
pioneer of criminology
1870 Dorothy Dix (d.
December 16,
1951; not
to be confused with Dorothea Dix,
1802 -
'87,
social activist), pen-name of US journalist
Elizabeth Meriwether Gilmer (November 18, 1870 - December
16, 1951),
who was famous for authoring a newspaper column that gave advice to
people suffering personal or emotional problems. Letters in her
column were typically addressed "Dear Dorothy", which has
become an archetype for advice columns in newspapers, magazines and
other printed media.
Dorothy Dix's name gave rise to a political term
in Australia
for a simple question asked of a Minister by a backbencher
from their own party.
Such a question is often referred to as a "Dorothy Dixer" and is
used to give the Minister a chance to promote themselves or the work that
the Government is doing in their area, or to criticise the opposition
party's policies, or to raise the profile of the backbench member asking
the quesion. The term has been common in Australian politics since the
1950s and is a common and widely accepted tactic used during question
time in the House
of Representatives.
1874 Clarence Day (d. 1935), American author
1882 Jacques Maritain (d. 1973), French
philosopher
1883 Carl
Vinson (d. 1981), United States Congressman
1891 Gio Ponti (d. 1979), Italian
architect
1897 Patrick Blackett (d. 1974),
English physicist, 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics
1898 Joris
Ivens (d. 1989), filmmaker
1899 Eugene Ormandy (d. 1985), conductor
1901 George Gallup (d. 1984), statistician, opinion
pollster
1906 Sir Alec Issigonis,
Greek-British
designer of cars, now remembered chiefly for the development of the Mini,
launched by the British
Motor Corporation (BMC) in 1959
1906 Klaus
Mann (d. 1949), publicist, dramatist and narrator
1906 George
Wald (d. 1997), American chemist, 1967 Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine
1908 Imogene Coca (d. 2001),
pioneering US television comedienne
1909 Johnny Mercer
(d. 1976), lyricist
1916 Amelita Galli-Curci
(d. 1963), opera soprano
1923 Alan Shepard (d. 1998) , astronaut
1928 Mickey Mouse
debuted in NY in Walt Disney's
Steamboat
Willie, the first successful sound-synchronized animated
cartoon and a loose parody
of
Steamboat
Bill, Jr. (1928), starring Buster Keaton.
Ub
Iwerks, Disney's right
hand man in the creation of the early Mickey Mouse cartoons, later said, "I've
never been so thrilled in my life. Nothing since has ever equalled
it."
1935 Rudolf Bahro (d. 1997), dissident
1936 Hank Ballard (d. 2003), musician
1939 Brenda Vaccaro, actress
1939 Margaret Atwood, Canadian writer
(The Handmaid's Tale;
The Blind Assassin – Booker
Prize winner 2000)
1941 David Hemmings (d. 2003), British actor
1942 Linda
Evans, American actress (TV
soap opera: Dynasty)
1944 Susan Sullivan, actress
1946 Alan Dean Foster, author
1947
Ross
Wilson, Australian
musician, singer, songwriter, guitarist and producer best known for
fronting the groups Daddy
Cool and Mondo
Rock, and for his production of albums by the Australian band Skyhooks
1948 Andrea Marcovicci, singer, actress
1950 Jameson Parker, actor
1958 Laura Miller, mayor of Dallas, Texas, USA
1960 Kim
Wilde, singer
1962 Kirk Hammett, musician
1966 Jorge Camacho, poet in Spanish and Esperanto
1968 Owen Wilson, actor (Rushmore; Zoolander;
The Royal Tenenbaums)
1975
Anthony
McPartlin, English television presenter
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2347
BCE
In former times, Noah
was said to have left the ark on this day. Muslim tradition says June 19, which year I
don't know.
God decides to
kill everyone
"13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh
is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and,
behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt
thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.
15 And this is the fashion which thou shalt make
it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it
fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
16 A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou
finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof;
with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it."
From Genesis
6
The animals
were not all in pairs
"1 And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and
all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this
generation.
2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by
sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the
male and his female.
3 Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female; to
keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth."
From Genesis
7
Indonesia: Myths of
Origins and the Deluge Melanesia: Myths of Origins
and the Deluge
Polynesia: Myths of
Origins and the Deluge Micronesia: Myths of
Origins and the Deluge
Australia: Myths of
Origins and the Deluge A Legend of the Great Flood
1095 The Council of Clermont began. The council was
called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First
Crusade to the Holy Land.
1302 Pope Boniface VIII issued the Papal bull
Unam
sanctam ('The One Holy'), which historians consider one of the most
extreme statements of Papal spiritual supremacy ever made.
1307 On this day, according to tradition, William Tell (Wilhelm
Tell) famously shot the apple off his son's head. One aspect of the tale is
defiance of authority; another is the strong bond between a father and his
child. I suppose that it why I and so many people like it, and why this simple
story has survived the centuries.
The legend as told by
Sabine Baring-Gould in
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages (London, 1866)
(Source): In the year 1307, Gessler,
Vogt (local governor) of the Emperor
Albert I of Hapsburg (c.
1255 - 1308),
German king, and duke of Austria, eldest son of King
Rudolph I of Habsburg, set a hat on a pole as symbol of imperial power, and ordered everyone who passed by to salute it. On this day, tradition has it, a mountaineer of the name of Wilhelm Tell boldly passed by the symbol of authority without saluting. By Gessler's command he was at once seized and brought before him. As Tell was known to be an expert archer, he was ordered by way of punishment to shoot an apple off the head of his own son.
 Finding no way out of it, Tell submitted
to Gessler's authority. The apple was placed on the child's head, Tell bent his
bow, the arrow sped, and apple and arrow fell to the ground together. But the
Vogt noticed that Tell, before shooting, had stuck another arrow into his belt,
and he enquired the reason.
"It was for you," replied the
sturdy archer. "Had I shot my child, know that it would not have missed your
heart."
Lone Ranger control
'Guglielmo Tell' (1829) by Gioacchino Antonio Rossini
'The William Tell Overture'
The legend in medieval Norway
In Norwegian history, it also appears with variations again and again. It is told
of King Olaf the Saint, who died in 1030, that, desiring the conversion of a
brave heathen named Eindridi, he competed with him in various athletic sports.
He swam with him, wrestled, and then shot with him. The king dared Eindridi to
strike a writing-tablet from off his son's head with an arrow. Eindridi prepared
to attempt the difficult shot. The king bade two men bind the eyes of the child
and hold the napkin, so that he should not move when he heard the whistle of the
arrow. The king aimed first, and the arrow grazed the lad's head. Eindridi then
prepared to shoot, but the mother of the boy interfered, and persuaded the king
to abandon this dangerous test of skill. In this version also, Eindridi is
prepared to revenge himself on the king, should the child be injured ...
Read on at the William Tell page in
the Scriptorium
1421 A seawall
at the Zuider
Zee dike broke, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people in the Netherlands.
1477 William
Caxton produced Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres, the first English book
printed on a printing press.
"At his wooden
press in Westminster, William Caxton completes a translation by Earl Rivers
from the French of Dictes or Sayengs of the Philosophers, the first
book to be printed in England. During the early 1470s, the English-born Caxton
learned the art of printing in Cologne, Germany, and in 1475, produced the
first book ever printed in English, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye. In
1476, he returned to England to set up his press in Westminster. Caxton's
press, like other early presses in Germany, used printing types that imitated
handwriting. Artistically, Caxton was the finest printer of his day, using his
famed Black Letter type that imitated the calligraphy of Haarlem monks. During
his career as a printer, Caxton went on to print almost one hundred books in
England, including the Canterbury
Tales, the late fourteenth-century masterpiece by English poet
Geoffrey Chaucer." Source
1626 St Peter's Basilica was consecrated.
1814 Death of William
Jessop, canal
and railway engineer.
1834
Edward Henty formed a settlement at
Portland,
Victoria,
Australia.
1840 The last convicts arrived in Australia on HMS Eden.
1854
Melbourne,
Australia:
A
retrial took place in the case of
the murder of
James Scobie. The trial, presided over by Judge
Redmond Barry,
was a catalyst of the events of the
Eurkea Stockade.
Was
Scobie killed? A divergent opinion
1865 Twenty-nine-year-old Mark
Twain's story The Celebrated Jumping
Frog of Calaveras County was published in New York's
The Saturday Press.
"Twain had
heard this story when he stayed at a mining camp in the Tuolumne Hills, in
California. Published in a New York periodical, The Saturday Press,
the story was an immediate hit when it was reprinted in newspapers far and
wide. Written much in the manner of the Southwestern humor popular in
Twain's youth, this fine tall tale brought not only his first national fame
but also the first approval of his work by several discerning critics." Source
1874 USA: Frances
Willard and others founded the Women's
Christian Temperance Union to promote sobriety and protect the family from
the ravages of alcohol. WCTU still exists today.
 1879 Augustus
Wernicke (pictured), youngest member of the gang of Australian
bushranger, Captain Moonlite, was fatally shot at Wantabadgery Station, in the
Wagga Wagga district of
New South Wales. Wernicke is said to have cried when shot, "Oh, God, I am shot and I'm only
fifteen". The teen bushranger's compatriot, James Nesbitt, was also shot
and died two hours later.
Gus Wernicke is often called Australia's youngest bushranger, though Ned Kelly also
got into crime at much the same age as an 'apprentice' to Harry Power (real name
Henry Johnson).
"Constable Bowen hit a second bushranger, but
was then shot dead by Scott. When a third bushranger was hit, Scott
surrendered. Nesbitt was dead and Wernicke died a few days later. It was at
first thought that the Kelly gang had been captured.
"At the trial in Sydney, Scott pleaded for the
lives of his three surviving companions. 'If the law has been so broken that
it must be avenged by a human life,' he said, 'let me be the victim and
spare these youths. God created them for something better than the gallows.'
Scott and Rogan were hanged on 20 January 1880. The death sentences on Bennett
and Williams were commuted to life imprisonment." Source
More
And more
More bushrangers in the Book of Days: Ned Kelly; Captain Thunderbolt
Highwaymen, outlaws, bushrangers, pirates, gangsters, etc in the Book of
Days
1883 American
and Canadian railroads
instituted five standard continental time zones,
ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
1886 Death of Chester
A Arthur, 21st President of the United States.
 1893
Sydney,
Australia: Poet Henry
Lawson boarded the SS Waihora (Capt. J Anderson) for Wellington, New Zealand,
leaving with Walter Head, the new editor of William Lane's Worker,
a poem for the settlers of New Australia.
Lawson, the son of Australia's 'Mother of
Womanhood Suffrage', Louisa
Lawson, arrived in Wellington on November
27, the day before New Zealand women voted,
which was a world first. Having no money, he spent the first few nights
sleeping in pipes in a Wellington park (the photo was taken at this point, and
looks it), worked in a sawmill, sold a few verses and stories and very much enjoyed
a few weeks that summer working on a gang repairing
telegraph lines.
He came back to Australia
after a few months on the promise of an editorial job on the daily edition of
the Worker, only to find on arrival in Sydney that the radical paper had
folded three days earlier.
Situationism
in Sydney: The Active Service Brigade
On the same day as Henry was sailing out of Sydney
Heads for New Zealand, a cryptic ad in Sydney's Saturday Daily Telegraph
read: "ACTIVE SERVICE BRIGADE ('A' Division) — Church Parade, St. Andrews
Cathedral, SUNDAY MORNING, 11; to hear of 'Him who has been murdered by the
Law'. Countersign, 'Silence'. By order (7)."
"All that could be known for certain was that
members of the Active Service Brigade's 'A' Division would parade to St Andrews
Cathedral, the principal home in Sydney of the Church of England; they would
enter during the traditional Sunday morning service and symbolically claim the
spirit of Jesus for their cause, highlighting his fate before an unjust law. By
subverting the highly regulated 'anti-theatre' of the religious service, the
Brigade might provide the worshippers with an insight into what was happening
outside as the colonial economy collapsed into the economic depression and mass
unemployment that followed the banking crisis of early 1893."
Source
When some 30 members of the far-left Active Service
Brigade 'A' Division marched the following day, Sunday, November 19, upon the no
doubt bemused congregation of St
Andrew's Cathedral, they were almost outnumbered by the plain clothes police
officers watching them. Later 250 ASB members and sympathisers processed through
the city, following a huge crucifix, to which was nailed an effigy of 'a downtrodden man' in tattered rags, smeared with red paint.
"They paused for speeches outside the Hotel
Australia and the Grand Central Coffee Palace, where the well-heeled had
gathered for the evening. The marchers concluded with an abortive attempt, led
by Dodd, to appropriate a service in the Methodist Centenary Hall in York
Street. Dodd the transgressive preacher invoked biblical metaphors to condemn
the exploitation of the poor by the rich, only to be drowned out by vigorous
interjection from the Church choir." Source
One activist we may be sure was there that day would
have been Arthur Desmond
(c. 1859 - c.
1914), who used to sign himself "Number 7". He was a prime mover of the Brigade, which had its office and Reading Rooms
at 221½ Castlereagh Street, Sydney, up a lane that ran off the street, between WHT McNamara's Book
and News Depot, and Leigh House at
223, the home of the Australian Socialist
League, another gathering place for 1890s Sydney radicals.
The assessment books for
1891 show the following:
221: 3-storey brick shop, ratepayer Mrs Ryan, owner Mrs Agnes Simmons
221a: 3-storey brick shop, ratepayer John
Haynes, owner Mrs Agnes Simmons
St George's Church
221b: 3-storey brick shop, ratepayer John Haynes, owner Mrs Agnes Simmons
223: 3-storey brick shop, ratepayer BE Hawtree, owner Mrs Agnes Simmons
(Courtesy Angela McGing, Archivist, City of Sydney
Archives; Note: John
Haynes who was the ratepayer on these buildings started [with JF
Archibald] The
Bulletin and was a Member of Parliament for 29 years.)
This south end of
town was a densely populated working class district – some 30,000 of Sydney's
100,000 population, according to Statistical Register of New South Wales for
1894, p. 588 (this is the city itself; the entire County of Cumberland which
today is generally known as Sydney, had about 400,000 at this time).
The ASB was urban unemployed workers organised by an
Irish elocutionist, John
Dwyer (1856 -
1934), and Desmond during the 1890s Depression. The Brigade ran
a soup kitchen, housed the homeless and also disrupted Parliament and, as we
have seen, Protestant church services. The Active Service Brigade's aim was to
"change the present competitive system into a co-operative and social
system".
"A huge building in Castlereagh-street was taken and converted to the double purpose of a barracks establishment for the Brigade and a cheap shelter for the hard-up. In fact, this combination gave the Brigade an effective force, always on hand, of several hundred men; on and off, scarcely less than a thousand; for, practically, all who came were against the Government, and, moreover, in sympathy with the Brigade, because it was in sympathy with them. Very many of them were enrolled as members.
"The Brigade offered men a dormitory shelter, with stretcher and blanket, and a morning refreshment of tea and bread and butter, for the total sum of threepence, which covered the cost, and even left a margin when dealing with numbers; and nobody was refused on account of inability to pay - a man was in such a case given credit, with the understanding that he would pay if he got in a position to do so. Those, however, who took advantage of this to sponge on the Brigade whilst persistently boozing away what money they got, were blacklisted, and turned out when other men needed the accommodation. They were only a small minority at any time. In numerous cases men stayed on credit for months, and faithfully paid their share when they later on obtained the means. This branch of operations has ever since been maintained.
"As the regular garrison was provisioned at the barracks, the kitchen department was necessarily considerable, and it was soon extended to provide dinner and supper at 3d. for all who cared to come. This occasioned the ordinary restaurants to bring down their price from 6d. to 3d., and then the Brigade, simply to ease off its own work, dropped that line of operations. The 3d. restaurants are still in full business in Sydney.
"Public demonstrations of the unemployed were organised, and propagandist meetings, both indoors and out of doors, held; also a printing press was established, and a weekly paper,
'Justice,' was issued.
"The Brigade about this time began to suffer from the Reign of Terror. At first the Dibbs Government winked at it, under the impression that what was done against McMillan would react in favour of Dibbs, but the Brigade soon put an end to this impression. Thereafter, the premises were haunted by police pimps, offering to procure dynamite or asking for assistance to burn down the city. They were always tracked to the detectives with whom they consorted."
JA
Andrews (1865 - 1903), Sydney
anarchist, from a series
of retrospective articles about the Active Service Brigade, published in Tocsin
during May, 1900
In 1895, the ASB ran its own coal mine near Wentworth
Falls in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney, and moved into co-operative gold
mining in 1899. Until disbanding in about
1902, the ASB also provided (for
threepence) lodging, breakfast and a 'Plunge Shower or Bath' to the unemployed.
On Sunday evenings, there were free lectures, no doubt accompanied by the ASB's
trademark singing of the Marseillaise. The
ASB was generally at odds with the Australian
Socialist League,
by espousing direct action rather than parliamentary means of attaining
socialism.
Arthur Desmond, mysterious revolutionist
Not much is known
about the ASB's leader, Arthur Desmond. He stood in
1884 for Parliament in the
seat of Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, where he is believed to have been born some 25
years before (or even earlier; this source says c.
1842;
it seems Desmond deliberately obscured details of his life).
By
October,
1892, he was in Sydney as a political activist, newspaper editor and
writer, occasionally published in The Bulletin. Anti-Semitic,
Nietzschean, and vitriolic, he edited and published the journal Justice for the Active Service Brigade,
as well as an anti-semitic newsletter on the banking collapse of
1893, Hard Cash, printed at
a secret press located in a cave near West's Bush at Paddington. Hard Cash
(subtitled 'The Standard Bearer', circulated about 40 issues at sixpence a copy.
The police tried hard to
locate the press, but the best they could do was
prosecute the store owners who sold Hard Cash. In
1894, five were prosecuted in the
Sydney Anarchy Trials,
and SA Rosa and WHT McNamara were
imprisoned, "for three and six months respectively, for selling a
publication that criminally libelled a financial corporation" (Verity Burgmann, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of
Labor, 1885 - 1905, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985 pp 63 ff; emphasis mine; the bank was the Savings Bank of New
South Wales).
"Poet, actuary, and revolutionist"
Fellow activist JA
Andrews called Desmond a "poet, actuary, and revolutionist" (source). Its raison
d'etre: "'The object of all revolutions ... is 'hard cash', that is to
say, Leisure, Land, Food and Clothing — FOR THOSE WHO COME OUT ON TOP" (Hard
Cash, September, 1893).
Although he
does not appear to have described himself as an "anarchist", Desmond was
"an individualist anarchist along the lines of Max Stirner" (Frank Prebble).
He was a leading figure in radical political circles in Sydney for two or three years, associated with labour politicians
William Morris Hughes
(later Australian Prime Minister) and Jack Lang (brother-in-law of Henry
Lawson and later Premier of New South Wales). Lang helped Desmond "turn the
mangle" to print Hard Cash "in the front room of a cottage in Rose Street,
Darlington". Lang also wrote:
Arthur Desmond, a real revolutionary, ran the hostel, collecting money in the Domain and elsewhere. Cardinal Moran was one of those who helped. Many families were lucky to get a threepenny meat ration a day. When Desmond got into strife with the law over one of his demonstrations in the city, I had the job of running his hostel for some days.
Lang, Jack, I Remember, 1956, Chapter Three, 'Australia's
Experiment in Communism'
For a brief time Desmond was an influence on Lawson's poetry
(eg, 'A
Leader of the Future' (Worker,
1893), which was pilloried, as it
happens also on November 18, 1893, in the Worker, by a writer signed as
"Murphy", comparing Lawson to the American politician and Atlantis
proponent, Ignatius Donnelly).
He wrote hundreds of poems, apparently often
blood-and-thunder verse such as 'Labor Song' or 'Hear Tigers Snarl':
Above the Senate's brawl – the maddening roar for gain,
Do you hear the Christmas Carol – the felons clanking chains,
Behind yon prison walls, your leg-ironed comrade slaves,
While here in marble walls are harlots, knights and knaves.
Your comrades rot in goal – the hungry cry for bread,
Your wives are thin and pale, their hearts are filled with dread,
And earth resounds with praise in holy, heavenly tones,
While tigers prowl the land to crush your children's bones.
Ho! Men of New South Wales, Hark! hear the fetters clink!
Are you but eunuch-churls that only scream and slink?
If you were virile men, you'd raise your strong right arm,
Beard tigers in their den to guard your mates from harm.
You live the life of dogs, you tug and scat and strain,
Your back the slaver flogs while raking in his gain;
You see your sisters starve, you see them on the marts,
You hear the tigers snarl while rending out their hearts.
O men of New South Wales, behold your ruffian horde,
Who spurn you with their hoof, and bash you with the sword;
Behold the butcher band that shear and tan your hide.
Have you not grit to stand and tame their wolfish pride?
You rise to voice your wrongs, they club you for your pains,
Wheel out their murderous guns to scatter, splash your brains;
They steal your public lands, they steal the cash you earn,
Ho! Cringe to their commands, you're only dogs not men.
In glittering halls they feast – harlots, knights and knaves –
While inside prison walls your legironed comrade slaves.
Ho! Men of New South Wales, Hark! hear the fetters clink!
Are ye but eunuch-slaves, that only scream and slink?
Desmond, who had been a
Māori rights campaigner in
New Zealand, was also author of the poem The Song of Te Kooti,
but it was his books that made the greatest impact on international labor
politics. In 1896, he published (in Chicago) a Nietzschean, racist, misogynistic,
anti-Semitic book he had written in Sydney, The survival of the fittest, or, The philosophy of power
(reprinted in London and Melbourne as Might is Right). From
a prefatory note entitled 'All Else Is Error':
The natural world is a world of war; the natural man is a warrior; the natural law is tooth and claw. All else is error. A condition of combat everywhere exists. We are born into perpetual conflict. It is our inheritance even as it was the inheritance of previous generations. The 'condition of combat' may be disguised with the holy phrases of St Francis, or the soft, deceitful doctrines of a Kropotkin or a Tolstoy, but it cannot eventually be evaded by any human being ... It rules all things ... and it decides all who imagine policemanized populations, internationally regulated tranquility, and State organized industrialism so joyful, blessed and divine.
Source: 'Ragnar
Redbeard and the Right of Might', by SE Parker
It was a fierce polemic which, it is said, went to numerous editions
internationally; Leo
Tolstoy argued against it in What is art?,
1898, and it influenced some of the early Wobblies (and, a century later, some
Satanist and right-wing libertarians):
"Today the book is enjoying a revival amongst the American marginal crowd as well as with pseudo satanists (industrial band Non have recorded an aural version) and right wing libertarians (Loompanics Books have reprinted it). Unfortunately many of those now enjoying the book have a tendency (as with the SCUM manifesto) to take it at face value ignoring its satirical content and interpreting its ranting as authentic
radicalism ...
"The publishing house in Chicago who circulate
the Literary Index makes the claim that Redbeard's teachings were mainly
responsible for the great European war. It claims that the former Emperor
William of Germany, Roosevelt, D'Annunzio and William Hughes had all read the
typewritten manuscript and absorbed the strenuousness and ruthlessness
displayed by those individuals and others of lesser notoriety."
Source
Desmond, who once served two months' hard labour for chalking on a bank
"Going Bung", left the Active Service Brigade and got involved in the
establishment of a paper called The New Order, with which Billy Hughes and William Holman (another
Premier-to-be of New South Wales) were also associated.
In
December,
1893, an editorial in The Times (Wellington, New
Zealand, where Henry
Lawson was living at the time) surveyed the career of Arthur Desmond in Sydney, condemning him. Lawson came to his defence with 'Arthur Desmond', not in
Times but in Fair Play (under the pen-name 'Australian Exile'),
raising the question of Lawson's racism and proto-fascist sympathies. However,
notwithstanding the fact that Lawson's work (particularly his poetry) is full of
distasteful far-right rants, it must be said that the Australian writer's
defence of the New Zealander was more on account of Desmond's courage in stating
unpopular views than for the views themselves. It is likely that this sort of
nonsense at this stage in Lawson's career did him harm, particularly in
Desmond's native country, where Henry Lawson was generally hard-up for writing
work.
After a brief, mysterious and peripatetic career in
Australia he is believed to have spent time in America and Britain, and is also reported to have travelled to Manchuria and South Africa,
dying in Mexico in 1914, or perhaps in Palestine in
1918 (serving with that
great imperialist, Viscount General Edmund Allenby!) or
else in 1926. Desmond, or 'Ragnar
Redbeard' as he commonly called himself in print (in London he ran a
periodical called Redbeard's Review which ran for about four years), was also said to be alive and running a bookshop in Chicago
in the 1920s. His end is as mysterious as his beginning.
Arthur Desmond in New Zealand
"Desmond stood as 'a representative of the small settler and the working man', and polled 190 votes with a radical platform including a land tax and a tax on the unearned increment, resumption of the Crown's right of pre-emption on Maori land, annual parliaments, and the abolition of the Legislative Council. The press dismissed his election meetings as 'low comedy' and his policies as outrageous. Later that year he wrote to the
Hawke's Bay Weekly Courier denouncing Julius Vogel and Robert Stout at length and describing all parliamentarians as 'a pack of thieves', and was banned from the paper's columns.
"When he stood for Parliament again in 1887 Desmond claimed that in the previous three years he had been blacklisted by runholders and forced to leave the district to find work. Undeterred, he renewed his attack on landlords, usurers and monopolists and advocated nationalisation of large estates and the establishment of a state bank. His opponents remained unimpressed, but at the poll Desmond received 562 votes to the 968 of the sitting member, W. R. Russell.
"Arthur Desmond next came to public attention early in 1889 in Poverty Bay, when he was shouted down at a public meeting at Makaraka, called to condemn the government's inaction over the threatened visit of Te Kooti. Desmond had attempted, unwisely, to defend Te Kooti's peaceful intentions. Four days later, at a meeting in Gisborne on 21 February called by the town's Vigilance Committee, he came forward with a message from the chiefs who had invited Te Kooti and was ejected from the building. Desmond denied claims that he was in Te Kooti's pay, and argued that local antagonism derived from the settlers' desire for free trade in Maori land - 'avarice directed by shrewd and sagacious men.' The Maori, he wrote elsewhere, 'look upon our whole system of land purchase and land monopoly as an unpardonable wrong'."
Source
Postscript: It
was a busy and interesting day in Sydney among the Castlereagh Street radicals.
On the same day that Henry
Lawson boarded the Waihora and Desmond advertised the St Andrew's
Cathedral demonstration, November 18, 1893, a song by Mary Cameron (later Dame Mary Gilmore), 'The Men
of New Australia', was published in New Australia, the journal of the William Lane-led New Australia movement. John Le Gay Brereton
published a review of it (I'm not sure in which journal, possibly the Bulletin), which
led to him meeting Mary. She, in turn, was the one who introduced him to Lawson,
at her place in Enmore Rd, Marrickville, early in 1894. (Jack Brereton and Lawson formed a close
friendship that was later soured by a personal argument over poetry.) Brereton
later wrote, "[Mary] then tactfully waved us into the street while
the night was yet young. Of all the women I know there is none who better
understands the nature of men" (Knocking Around, p5).
A Wild Awakening : the 1893 Banking Crisis and the Theatrical
Narratives of the Castlereagh Street Radicals
Might is
Right
discussed at a Satanist website
Hearn, Mark,
Hard
Cash: John Dwyer and his contemporaries 1890-1914, unpublished PhD
thesis Department of History, University of Sydney, 2000
Burgmann, Verity, In Our Time: Socialism and the
Rise of Labor, 1885 - 1905, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985 pp 63 ff
Lawson & Co:
associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson More,
by JA Andrews
Sydney
Anarchy Trial of February, 1894
Sydney
Anarchy Trial of June, 1894
1901 America and Britain agreed on terms for the construction of the
Panama Canal.
1903
The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed by the United
States and Panama,
giving the Americans exclusive rights over the Panama
Canal Zone.
1904 A major gold strike was made
320 km south of
Salisbury,
Rhodesia.
1905 Prince Carl of Denmark became
King Haakon VII of Norway.
1909 Two United
States warships were sent to Nicaragua
after 500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) were executed by order of
dictator Jose Santos Zelaya.
1910 Suffragettes attacked the British House of Commons; 119 were
arrested.
A
world chronology of women's suffrage
US
chronology Louisa
Lawson, Australian suffragette
1916 World War I:
The First Battle of the Somme ended - In France, British
Expeditionary Force commander Douglas
Haig called off the battle which started on July 1,
1916.
1918 Latvia declared
its independence from Russia.
1926 George
Bernard Shaw refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize,
saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend
in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize".
1928
The release of the animated short
Steamboat
Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt
Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the second appearances of cartoon stars Mickey
and Minnie
Mouse.
Comix,
comics and cartoons in the Book of Days
1929
1929 Grand Banks earthquake: Off the
south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic
Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake
centred on Grand Banks, broke 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and
triggered a tsunami
that destroyed many south coast communities in the
Burin Peninsula area.
1936 Germany and Italy recognised the
Falangist administration of
General Francisco Franco as the legitimate government of Spain.
1936 Ella
Fitzgerald, aged 18, cut her first record,
'My First Affair'. More
1938 Trade union
members elected John L Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial
Organizations.
1938 When late-President Mustafa
Kemal Atatürk of Turkey was lain in state,
twenty people were trampled to death in the crowd.
1940 World War
II: German
leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign
Minister Galeazzo Ciano met to discuss Benito
Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.
1941
Death of
Chris Watson, third Prime Minister of Australia, who was
born in Valparaíso, Chile,
in
1867. In his
lifetime he maintained that his father was a British seaman called George
Watson. In fact his father was a Chilean citizen of German descent, Johan
Cristian Tanck. His mother was a New Zealander, Martha Minchin, who had married
Tanck in New
Zealand and then gone to sea with him.
In 1892
he helped to undo a terrorist bomb plot in Sydney involving
anarchist Larry
Petrie, poet Mary
Gilmore and parliamentarian Arthur
Rae ... read
more.
Lawson
& Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson
1943
World War II: 440 Royal Air Force planes bombed Berlin, causing
only light damage and killing 131. The RAF lost nine aircraft and 53 aviators.
1959 William
Wyler's film,
Ben-Hur,
premiered at
Loew's Theater in New York
City.
1970 US President, Richard
Nixon, asked the United States Congress for US$155 million in
supplemental aid for the Cambodian government (US$85 million was for military
assistance in order to help prevent the overthrow of the government of Premier Lon Nol by the Khmer Rouge
and North
Vietnam).
1971 Hard rock
band Led
Zeppelin released an untitled album, often dubbed Led
Zeppelin IV, featuring 'Rock
and Roll', 'Stairway to Heaven'
and other classic songs.
Wilson's
Almanac Book of Days hip list
1977 President Anwar
Sadat visited Israel, the first Egyptian
leader to do so.
Jim Jones, and a group photo from his Temple's happier days
1978 Jonestown mass suicide: In Jonestown agricultural
commune in remote north-western Guyana, Jim Jones
led his People's Temple in a mass murder-suicide; 913 died, including 276 children.
"People's Temple
leader Jim Jones leads hundreds of his followers in a mass murder-suicide at their 'Jonestown' agricultural
commune in remote northwestern Guyana. The few cult members who refused to
take the cyanide-laced fruit-flavored concoction were either forced to do so
at gunpoint or shot as they fled. The final death toll was 913, including 276
children ...
"James Warren 'Jim' Jones (born 13 May 1931) was a charismatic churchman who founded the initially Christian sect The Wings of Deliverance (precursor of The Peoples Temple) on 04 April 1955, in Indianapolis. He preached against racism, and his integrated congregation attracted mostly African Americans. In 1965, he moved the group to northern California, settling in Ukiah and after 1971 in San Francisco. In the 1970s, his church was accused by the press of financial fraud, physical abuse of its members, and mistreatment of children. In response to the mounting criticism, Jones led several hundred of his followers to South America in 1977 and set up a utopian agricultural settlement called Jonestown in the jungle of
Guyana.
"A year later, a group of ex-members convinced US Congressman Leo Ryan, a Democrat of California, to travel to Jonestown and investigate the commune. On 17 November 1978, Ryan arrived in Jonestown with a group of journalists and other observers. At first the visit went well, but the next day, as Ryan's group was about to leave, several People's Church members approached members of the group and asked them for passage out of Guyana. Jones became distressed at the defection of his members, and one of Jones' lieutenants attacked Ryan with a knife. Ryan escaped from the incident unharmed, but Jones then ordered Ryan and his companions ambushed and killed at the airstrip as they attempted to leave. The congressman and four others were murdered as they attempted to board their charter
planes.
"Back in Jonestown, Jones directed his followers in a mass suicide in a clearing in the town. With Jones exhorting the
'beauty of dying' over a loudspeaker, hundreds drank a lethal cyanide and
Kool-Aid drink. Those who tried to escape were chased down and shot by
Jones' [sic] lieutenants. Jones died of a gunshot wound in the head, probably self-inflicted. Guyanese troops, alerted by a cult member who escaped, reached Jonestown the next day. Only a dozen or so followers survived, hidden in the jungle. Most of the 913 dead were lying side by side in the clearing where Jones had preached to them for the last time." Source
Jonestown website
Jonestown
memorial
Father
Cares: Extraordinary audio documentary from NPR
These
three sites give names of Jonestown-associated people who have died in
mysterious circumstances since Jonestown
CIA involved?
Sinister
connections? Questions
that remain
1982 Duk Koo Kim
died unexpectedly from injuries sustained during a 14-round match against Ray Mancini
in Las Vegas,
prompting limited reforms in the 'sport' of boxing.
1985 Calvin
and Hobbes, a comic strip
by Bill
Watterson, was first published.
Comix,
comics and cartoons in the Book of Days
1987 Iran-Contra scandal: The United States Congress issued its final
report on the Iran-Contra affair,
stating that US President Ronald Reagan bore
"ultimate responsibility" for
wrongdoing by his aides, and his administration exhibited "secrecy, deception,
and disdain for the law".
1987 Kings Cross fire: In London, 31 people
died in a fire at the city's busiest underground station at King's Cross.
1988 'War on Drugs': US President Ronald
Reagan signed a bill into law providing the death
penalty for murderous drug
traffickers.
1988 A million Serbs demonstrated in
Belgrade, demanding
independence.
1991 Shiite Muslim
kidnappers in Lebanon
released Anglican Church envoys
Terry Waite
and Thomas Sutherland from captivity.
Waite had been captured on
January 21, 1987;
Sutherland on June 9,
1985.
I was appalled when I heard a prominent
American suggest that in certain circumstances the limited use of torture might
be justified. That is a dreadful statement to come from a civilised nation.
Terry Waite: The
Guantanamo Prisoners, Justice or Revenge?
The Voyage of
Terry Waite's Clogs Mockbituary
1993 In South
Africa, 21 political parties approved a new constitution.
1996 World-renowned bird expert Tony Silva was sentenced to seven years in prison without
parole for
leading an illegal parrot
smuggling ring.
1998 Alice
McDermott won the (USA) National Book Award with her novel Charming Billy.
1999 USA: In College Station, Texas, 12 were killed and 28
injured at Texas A&M University when a huge bonfire – the
Aggie Bonfire –
collapsed while
under construction.
1999 USA: In Jasper,
Texas, 24-year old Shawn Allen Berry was sentenced to life in prison,
becoming the third person convicted in the racially-motivated
dragging death of James Byrd, Jr.
Arrests of Falun Gung members in Tiananmen Square, Beijing
2000 Wang Huachen,
32, Falun Gong member,
died in a hospital of injuries he sustained jumping out of a 4th-storey window
at a police station in Huludao, north-eastern China. Or, so it is said.
From Wikipedia: The persecution of
Falun Gong practitioners has been regarded in a West as a major international human
rights issue. In 2000,
Ian
Johnson of the Wall Street Journal
investigated the reports of abuse, and published a series of investigative
articles that won him the Pulitzer Prize the
following year. According to the Falun Dafa Information Center (FDI), there are,
as of 2004,
955 verified cases of death of Falun Gong practitioners in mainland China, which
it claims were tortured to death. The report also states that hundreds of
thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained, with more than 100,000
sentenced to forced labor camps. Moreover, there are more than 30,000 documented
cases of persecution. The Communist Chinese Government does not deny detaining
Falun Gong practitioners, but insists that they died from hunger strikes and
refusals to seek medical treatments.
As of January, 2004, 16 lawsuits in 12 countries
have been filed around the world charging the former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin
and several other senior officials with genocide, torture, and crimes against
humanity, for their roles in the persecution of Falun Gong in mainland
China.
2002 Iraq disarmament crisis: United
Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix
arrived in Iraq.
2002 USA: New
Jersey schools banned dodgeball and tag.
2003 Special Extended DVD Edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
was released.
2003
USA:
The Local Government Act 2003, repealing Section 28,
became effective.
Tomorrow: Who was the Man in the Iron Mask?
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Wikipedia
and David Brown's prodigious Daily Bleed
are both excellent resources that aid my research.
I frequently make use of their generously liberal 'fair use', 'copyleft'
and 'anti-copyright' policies, with much gratitude.
© My own copyright
policy is also liberal, but as this is my livelihood, conditions apply.
Read more about today at Wilson's
Blogmanac
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reetings from Australia.
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Day of
Ardvi
Sura (Aredvi Sura Anahita), Mother of the Stars, ancient Persia
