Chapter 27
In This Chapter
● People who stood up to injustice
● People who overcame almost insurmountable odds
● People who advanced the medicine or science to the benefit of humankind
How do you judge how well known someone is? You can try a recognition survey, but that won’t tell you much. In any case, people can be very well known at one time and completely forgotten a few years later. Well, here are some other people you may or may not have heard of, but they’re all of them worth knowing about. This is their chance to get into the history books.
King Oswald of Northumbria
It might seem odd to start a list of people who should be better known with a king, but pretty much all the kings of Anglo-Saxon England deserve to be better known. Oswald (AD 633-642) wasn’t on the throne long in comparison with some rulers, but he was phenomenally successful. He came back from exile to liberate his native Northumbria from the fearsome Welsh King Cadwallon and triumphed over him against massive odds. Oswald was a Christian, and he got St Aidan down from Iona to help spread the gospel. He gave Aidan the island of Lindisfarne for his base, just down the coast from Oswald’s own castle at Bamburgh, and the two men worked very closely together. Oswald was one of those all-round monarchs like Alfred or Henry VIII, a scholar as well as a soldier. For more information on Oswald, head to Chapter 5.
Robert Grosseteste
Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253) was a thirteenth century bishop of Lincoln. He was also a great scholar and theologian, and chancellor of Oxford University, where he taught the pioneering scientist-monk Roger Bacon.
Grosseteste was a genuine scientist: He worked in astronomy and optics, and he showed how you could use lenses to see close up or at a great distance, as well as how light refracts in water. He was also a genuinely good bishop: He cleared up all the abuses in Lincoln diocese and saw to it that his parish priests did their jobs properly. Grosseteste wasn’t afraid to stand up to powerful people, either. When the Pope wanted to give English parishes to his Italian cronies, Grosseteste stopped him, even though the Pope suspended Grosseteste and threatened him with excommunication. Grosseteste also led a group of bishops who refused to obey the Pope’s orders to pay money over to the King - that’s making enemies in two high places. Almost his last act before he died was to tell the Pope to get lost when the Pope tried to wangle a post in England for his nephew. Grosseteste didn’t go in for drama in quite the way that Becket did, and he died in his bed.
Nicholas Owen
That’s St Nicholas Owen if you’re Catholic. In 1970, Pope Paul VI canonised 40 English and Welsh martyrs, and Nicholas Owen (?-1606) was one of them. We know next to nothing about Owen’s background, but we do know that he became a Jesuit lay brother in Elizabeth’s reign just when it was very dangerous to do so (see Chapter 12 for information about the persecution of Catholics - and just about any other religious sect). But his great claim to fame is that he built the most amazing priest holes - hiding places for Catholic priests. These were no sliding panel jobs (far too easy to detect); Owen was the Thomas Chippendale of priest holes. His masterpiece is at Sawston Hall near Cambridge. You can stand on a stone spiral staircase, with nothing but empty space underneath the step you are standing on, with the solid stone of the staircase clearly visible between the wooden slats, and yet you are standing on the entrance to a priest hole. It doesn’t seem humanly possible, but it is - I’ve been in it.
John Lilburne
It takes class to get yourself imprisoned by Charles I and by Oliver Cromwell, but John Lilburne (c1614-1657) managed it. Lilburne would stand up to anyone, take any punishment, in the name of religious liberty. When Lilburne met a Puritan preacher called John Bastwick, who had had his ears cut off for criticising the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was appalled and spoke out on Bastwick’s behalf. Willaim Laud, the Archbishop in question, had Lilburne arrested and whipped through the streets. Not surprisingly, Lilburne fought for parliament in the English Civil War (1642-49), and very well he did too.
But then he got into trouble with parliament. His old pal Bastwick had him arrested for criticising the Speaker of the House of Commons (there’s gratitude for you). Parliament put Lilburne in prison and fined him, and then decided he wasn’t guilty after all and let him out. Next Lilburne took up the cause of the ordinary parliamentary soldiers, who had won the Civil War for parliament but didn’t have the vote. He helped found a radical group called the Levellers who criticised the corruption and power-seeking in parliament. Now it was Cromwell’s turn to have Lilburne arrested and charged with treason. For information on these tumultuous years and events, head to 13.
Lilburne was one of those people who stand up for what they know is right and aren’t silenced or intimidated, whatever the government does to them. We could do with more people like him. Oh, and like Grosseteste (see the earlier section), he died in his bed, though you wouldn’t have put money on it.
Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano (c1745-c1797) was a successful writer and explorer in eighteenth century England. He took part in a number of naval battles in the Seven Years’ War and joined an expedition to find the elusive Northwest Passage round the top of Canada. Later he bought a plantation in Central America and retired a wealthy man. OK, what’s so special? What is special about him is that for much of this time, he was an African slave. He came from Guinea, and he learned seafaring through being bought by a naval officer. He learned to read and write in the intervals between sea voyages. He managed to raise enough cash to buy his freedom, but he was forever being tricked out of his money.
At one point, it even looked as if he might be re-enslaved. He must be one of the very few former slaves who have become slave-owners, even though he took care to treat the slaves on his Caribbean plantation well. Not surprisingly, he took a keen interest in the movement to abolish the slave trade, which he knew at first hand. The slave trade produced many remarkable life stories, but not many as varied and surprising as Olaudah Equiano’s. Check him out.
John Snow
John Snow (1813-1854) was a humble London doctor, but he made his name by solving one of the most urgent medical puzzles of the nineteenth century: What on earth caused cholera? You do not want to catch cholera, believe me.
It starts with acute diarrhoea, and then all your body fluids drain away through any orifice going: It’s a really horrible way to die. Cholera hit London for the first time in 1832 from India, but how it spread was anyone’s guess. Most doctors assumed it was something in the air, a miasma, as they called it, but Snow thought it was more likely to be carried in something people ate or drank. When very sharp outbreak occurred in one particular part of London’s Soho in 1854, Snow looked at the statistics and logged the fatal cases on a map. The answer was staring him in the face: All the people who had died got their water from one particular pump at the corner of Broad Street; the people who used the pump at the other end of the street were fine. Snow got the pump handle removed and guess what? The deaths slowed down immediately. You won’t be surprised to hear that the “miasma” lobby refused to accept Snow’s findings, but Snow had shown how you could use statistics to help isolate the source of cholera. And, of course, he was right.
Sophia Jex-Blake
In 1865, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson became Britains first woman doctor, but anyone who thought that it was all plain sailing from now on was in for a rude shock. Sophia Jex-Blake (1840-1912) was a well-educated middle class lady who, in 1868, decided to train as a doctor. She enrolled at Edinburgh University, or at least she tried to. But Edinburgh put every obstacle it could think of in her way. When they couldn’t stop her and her companions enrolling, the university tried to stop them from taking their examinations or from getting their degrees. The students heckled her and tried to force her out of the lecture theatres. Jex-Blake had to spend almost as much time fighting legal battles with the university as in studying medicine. But she didn’t give in. Gradually people began to read about what was happening in Edinburgh. Parliament passed a law allowing women to enrol on medical courses on the same terms as men. Jex-Blake became a successful doctor, and helped found the London Medical School for Women. Not surprisingly, she was an active supporter of Votes for Women, too. Her case ought to be better known, if only because the opposition she faced was so incredibly fierce and just plain nasty. Not one of Edinburgh’s finest hours.
Emily Hobhouse
At the end of the Boer War, British General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener had the job of mopping up the Boer guerrilla fighters in the South African veldt. So he burned all crops for miles around, rounded the people up and forced them into a series of concentration camps. Yes, you did read that right. Soon thousands of men, women, and especially children were dying from malnutrition and disease. Which was not surprising, since the camps had almost no food, hardly any medical facilities, and no proper shelter.
Emily Hobhouse (1860-1926) travelled out to South Africa specifically to see these camps for herself. One tough lady, she visited the camps and told the camp commandants exactly what she thought of them. By sheer determination and persistence, she got them to make at least some small improvements - you know, like recognising soap as an essential. Then she went back to Britain to take the issue up with the prime minister. Emily Hobhouse is one of those people who won’t just sit and shake their heads at suffering but get up and do something about it. When Bob Geldof saw the news about famine in Ethiopia he got on the phone to create Band Aid; when Emily Hobhouse heard the news from South Africa, she got on a boat to create merry hell.
Dr Cecil Paine
For every famous figure like Alexander Fleming, the scientist who discovered penicillin, there are hundreds of Cecil Paines, and there wouldn’t be any Flemings without them. Cecil Paine was a Consultant Pathologist in Sheffield in the 1930s. He was working on infections, particularly a terrible infection, called puerperal fever, that was still killing thousands of mothers in childbirth. No-one knew what caused it, and the number of mothers dying from it was going up instead of down. Paine worked out that wearing a mask during the delivery helped reduce the risk, and he came so close to working out how to use penicillin to eradicate it altogether.
At that time, doctors were still making penicillin by leaving bottles and pans out to develop mould, which was a bit hit-and-miss. Nevertheless, Paine tried using the penicillin mould for eye infections. Now comes the sad bit. Paine found his penicillin so cumbersome that he gave up on it, but his assistant, Howard Florey, went on to crack the problem of how to make penicillin more efficiently for mass production. Thanks to that, puerperal fever virtually disappeared. Florey said that Paine’s work was crucial; Paine himself said he was a poor fool who didn’t see the obvious when it was stuck in front of him. Well, maybe. But it’s poor fools like that who do the work that helps the famous names make their discoveries, and it’s time someone pointed it out.
Chad Varah
Chad Varah (1911-) was a young Church of England vicar when, in 1936, he had to conduct the funeral of a young girl who had killed herself. What horrible thing had happened to make this young girl end her life? Her periods had started. Without anyone to tell her what was happening, this 14-year-old thought she must have contracted VD. Varah was so appalled that he decided to do something about it. The first thing, obviously, was to get some sex education going in Britain, and in the 1930s and ’40s, that took some courage. If school children today are well informed about their bodies and about sex, thank Chad Varah.
But Varah learned another lesson in that girl’s death. She didn’t die because her periods had started; she died because, when she most needed help, she felt totally alone, with no-one to turn to. Varah decided that no-one should ever feel that alone again, and in 1953 he started the telephone helpline that became the Samaritans. In 1953, many families didn’t have a telephone, and no-one had ever thought of using telephones in that way: Varah’s idea - that whoever you were, whatever the problem, if you needed help there would always be someone at the end of a phone ready to listen and support. 24/7 - was genuinely visionary thinking. Not many people bring off miracles, but creating the Samaritans seems to me to make Chad Varah one of them. A truly Great Briton.