


Diagram of a slave ship

Shopping for fabric

Wordsworth, 'Daffodils'

Textiles from India

Beethoven's sketches

Exhibition of a rhino and zebra

Deciphering the Rosetta Stone

Battle of Waterloo letter

Jane Austen, Persuasion

Peterloo Massacre

Cartoon of a street accident

Shampooing Surgeon

Description of London

Execution of a 12 year old boy

Diary entry on 'The Pillory'

Invention of photography

1832 Reform Act

Tolpuddle Martyrs

Early Chartist meeting notes

Dickens, Oliver Twist

The People's Charter

Dickens: Nicholas Nickleby

Poster for Living Mermaid

The Railways

First postage stamp

Coal mining

Popular entertainments

Engels: factory conditions

Freak show: What is it?

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

The Communist Manifesto

Chartist William Cuffay

The Great Exhibition

Sketch for the Crystal Palace

Woman's magazine

Poverty and the workhouse

London Zoo

Cookery for the poor
Human Exhibition

Mary Seacole

Ship building

Britain's Indian empire

Nightingale, Notes on Nursing

Victorian fashion

Florence Nightingale letter

Coal mining

Mrs Beeton - Lady's maid

Mrs Beeton

Mrs Beeton's Turkey

A Hulk (prison ship)

Underground trains

Alice in Wonderland

Letter from Charles Darwin

City slums

Opening of the Suez Canal

Music Hall

Street sellers

Freakshow posters

Invention of the telephone

Illusionists and conjurers

The textile industry

Victorian farming

Magic show

Circus poster

Victoria's Indian servant

Match Girls Strike

Jack the Ripper murders

Daily shopping

An Asian MP in Parliament

Gladstone: Irish Home Rule

Oscar Wilde on trial

Nightingale Nurse diary

Factory accidents

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
In 1887, soon after Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, Abdul Karim arrived with several other Indians at the Royal Household to attend the Queen.
The 24-year-old Abdul Karim was ‘tall with fine serious countenance’. Originally a clerk in Agra, Queen Victoria promoted him to be her native language teacher known as a Munshi, teaching her Hindustani. A favourite, he was elevated to the post of ‘Indian secretary’ in 1894 to assist the Queen with her ‘boxes’ and correspondence. He was given titles and cottages. Victoria also had his portrait painted. This attention displeased the Royal Court, leading to several intrigues maligning his character, as Lord Ponsonby’s letter shows.
After Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, he was sent back to India and his papers were burnt. No further royal servants from India were appointed.
Shelfmark: Mss Eur F 84/126a