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
The Great Exhibition of 1851, was intended to showcase the wonders of manufacturing and industry from around the modern world. It was housed in the Crystal Palace, a giant, intricate structure of iron and glass displaying over 100,000 objects. The palace was designed by gardener and architect Joseph Paxton. A copy of Paxton’s original sketch for the building is shown here – it was famously scribbled down on a piece of pink blotting paper while he attended a Midland Railway board meeting.
More than 2,000 men contributed to the construction of the site, which stood grandly in London's Hyde Park. Paxton's ingenious machines allowed 80 men to fix more than 18,000 panes of sheet glass in a week. More than 1,000 iron columns supported 2,224 trellis girders, 4,000 tonnes of iron, and 30 miles of guttering. The flooring was of boards set just over one centimetre apart, so that machines could sweep the dust through the spaces at the end of each day. In practice, the trailing skirts of the women visitors did the job perfectly.
Shelfmark: Add 62537