• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team
  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

Birmingham Steam Buses 1824-1910.

Whilst Molesworth continues to delve in to the Vapeur Exotica, moving ever forward towards front row within inches of the blackboard and Sir, creep, creep, cad, here at the back of the class the steamyokels are still searching out the more mundane to appear on the Steam Palace of Varieties and content themselves with another 'Surrey with the fringe on top' i.e. the 1902 London Road Car Thorneycroft featured a while ago on china mugs and coasters (and possibly on this exalted thread already). We muse over a 1790 horsedrawn coach, cartoon department, simply captioned the Greenich to Charing Cross Stage and see it as having taken on extra passengers from an early steam coach failure abandoned in haste lest they should be blown to smithereens. Traces of steam can be seen under the horse coach wheels. Their relief at being rescued is evident from their cheerful dispostion in such overcrowding. The hero Cad on the back looking uncommonly like Fagin has probably charged them double fare. "Half for the Company and half for me oy vay" and whilst Sir is out we are having a change from Scottish Steam Spirit and against the advice of the World famous lecturer Mr Ignorance, are trying some rum in our morning milk, it was that Lloyd playing Navy type music Sir. Go back to the front Molesworth, if you want some ask your Pater to send it in your next food parcel chiz.
View attachment 55969View attachment 55968View attachment 55970
pencil.png
 
Last edited:
That's the story of my life that is.... I feel another theatrical thread scenarios coming on....
 
Sketches by Molesworth: The Dickensian Steam Show - starring:

Thylacine - As Fagin, leader of the twisted underworld gang of steam-men, goons and geeks

Lloyd - As Bill Sykes, dark expert of the gang

Mikejee - As Artful Dodger, artful but dodges in & out

Moi - As Oliver, the pretty, poor (& pretty poor) boy-hero

Motorman - As Bumble The Beadle, enough said. Also plays a small bit-part as Police Officers Duff & Blathers in Steam Patrol car

Gurls (if there ever were any) - As Nancy
 
At last dear boy, I am getting decent parts in Molesworths Thespian Steam Productions - and I don't even need padding out for this one!:beam:
 
Coming back to the Ogle steam coach and the visit to Mr Rothschild. Was it only 2 days ago that that was posted? As I visited the Rothschild Archive earlier this year, I have asked the Archive Director if there is any reference to the visit in the family archive. Shall keep the class informed if I have any further news. Otherwise I have spent too much time following the exploits of the comic strip super heroes Lovelace and Babbage. Good job I was sitting at a desk at the back of the room.
 
...Also starring:

DavidGrain - As Samuel Pickwick, learned in records and papers (sounds an interesting lead! The game is afoot!! [as Holmes would say])
 
Myself in the Oliver Reed role? A man whose ability to imbibe I can only incredule at and aspire to? You do me proud, kind sir.
Personally, I think of myself more in the character of Sykes' dog - ugly of face and oft cowering in the corner, fearing the next kick of my master.
In my view Reed's best line was not uttered on stage or film set, but on the set of the Channel 4 television discussion programme After Dark after arriving drunk and attempting to kiss feminist writer Kate Millett, uttering the memorable phrase, "Give us a kiss, big tits."
 
My pleasure as always Lloyd, ahem, I hope you have an reference for that amusing anecdote?...
 
DavidGrain said:
Coming back to the Ogle steam coach and the visit to Mr Rothschild. Was it only 2 days ago that that was posted? As I visited the Rothschild Archive earlier this year, I have asked the Archive Director if there is any reference to the visit in the family archive. Shall keep the class informed if I have any further news. Otherwise I have spent too much time following the exploits of the comic strip super heroes Lovelace and Babbage. Good job I was sitting at a desk at the back of the room.
Click to expand...

Come closer to the front of the classroom, dear boy! (Rubs hands together theatrically ...) Thanks for that, Pickwick! I hope the Rothschild Archive yields a relevant snippet.

[So, while the Thylacine's away ... (Lost the internet last night: couldn't remember where I'd put it.) On returning to cyberspace, I find that I am cast in yet another role that requires standing on my hind legs ... (Sighs, and yawns gapingly.)]
 
Aidan said:
...
"Steam Travelling A company has been just established to run steam coaches in various parts of England The capital of the company is to be £350,000 They have ordered fifty coaches to be built at Birmingham and six at Maudsley's Sir H Parnell is the chairman of the company " is this Church bigging it up or someone else?
Click to expand...

Clarification (?)
Sir Henry Parnell, 1st Baron Congleton, was a member of the Whig administrations headed by Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne of the 1830's and also published works on financial and penal questions as well as on civil engineering including 1833 and 1838 editions of "A Treatise on Roads ...".

I think the article is saying that he was chairman of the Parliamentary Committee looking at Steam Travel but can't yet rule out that he was carrying on the grand tradition of being the chair of a company of Steam Omnibuses and not declaring a (significant) interest.... Any Ideas?
 
steam fans should perhaps watch on repeat or iplayer tonights "Who do you think you are", where Alexander Armstrong (that intensely irritating person advertising "Pimms Time!"), on his way from being descended from Edward III and william the Conqueror, is shown to be a descendent of the Marques of worcester. He, after spendig all his fortunes on supporting charles I , and being imprisoned for his efforts, invented a model steam engine (water controlling engine) in 1662. This depended on boiling water and using the steampressure to drive a column of water out of a container. Forgotten till 200 years later , a victorian antiquery broke open his coffin in order to try to find a model of theengine, which was supposed to have been buried with him. It wasn't there, but the antiquery took a finfernail as souvenir, and wrote about itr, but then, realising it wasn't quite appropriate, tried to obliterate the refernence by heavt crossing out. This however was foiled by careful work in the science museum
Mike
 
Aidan said:
... Sir Henry Parnell ... chair of a company of Steam Omnibuses and not declaring a (significant) interest.... Any Ideas?
Click to expand...

Parnell was chairman of the London, Holyhead and Liverpool Steam Coach and Road Company, already (briefly) encountered in the BSB classroom (posts #227 and #228). This company is suspected of bringing Hancock's "Erin" to Birmingham in 1835 (post #722).
 
Thanks Thylacine - I think Molesworth was unwell that day....I will try to conduct an infernal search of the newspapers for him
 
Thylacine said:
[So, while the Thylacine's away ... (Lost the internet last night: couldn't remember where I'd put it.) ]
Click to expand...

Why do I want to shout, "It's behind you!" in best pantomime style?

I've been temporarily away consuming the day's main repast (Faggots 'n peas in a good rich gravy, swilled down with a choice beverage) whilst watching the very same "Who do you think you are?" discussed above. Amazing to be able to trace one's lineage back to 1066! I can imagine my own ancestry more in the style of Blackadder's 'Baldrick' than royalty, though.
 
Now that's what I call a good night!

Paper search, ahem, threw up nothing obvious apart from a 1000 court circulars and adverts for his book (wonder how many it sold?) nothing that the infernal OCR could recognise in connection with steam, Erin, Holyhead, Liverpool or Birmingham - need to attack it from a different angle.
 
Thanks to the Artful Dodger and Oliver Twist for reminding us of that illustrious steam pioneer Edward Somerset (c 9 March 1603 - 3 April 1667), second Marquess of Worcester. In his eccentrically titled work A Century of the Names and Scantlings of such Inventions, As at present I can call to mind to have tried and perfected, which (my former Notes being lost) I have, at the Instance of a powerful Friend, endeavoured now in the Year 1655, to set these down in such a Way, as may sufficiently instruct me to put any of them in Practice (London: by J Grismond, 1663), he describes 100 of his wondrous works. This book is accessible (in a 1746 facsimile reprint) via an archive.org e-text. The table of contents on pages n29-36 (and the fact that he mislaid his notes!) show that the good Marquess was a man after our own hearts (quite possibly a previous incarnation of The Doctor himself! ;)).

Somerset's achivements are set out admirably in:
Robert Henry Thurston (1839-1903). A History of the Growth of the Steam Engine. London: C Kegan Paul & Co, 1878. Pages 19-24.​
Young Oliver linked us to Chapter 1 of this work (post #899). And again archive.org provides us with an e-text of the second revised edition (New York: D Appleton & Co, 1886), from which the pictures below are taken.

[Sorry for duplicating the pictures, but I think they're a little clearer. :)]
 
The actual book was in the hands of tonights programme's subject, Alexander Armstrong. It is as small as the e-version suggests, and if the man really did invent the devices he claimed, he must have been Da Vinci re-incarnated (or time-travelled - there is a theory that man has invented nothing, all so-called new machines are based on prototypes sent back in time from the future, in the hope that man can create his own destiny rather than the one planned out for him).

Sadly one of the failures in this work was the steam dragonfly - its tale and picture are below.

"This steam-powered vehicle was built in 1889 by French entomologists working with the theory that the wing-size to body-mass ratio makes flight for insects impossible. Upon startup it was found out immediatelty that the theory was indeed correct; insects can not fly. The vibration of their wings however, generates a spherical field of extradimentional energy that shifts matter in the space-time continuum allowing them a full range of effortless movement. In essence: the insect remains still and the world moves around it.
The concept proved to be too big for any rational mind to comprehend and drove most of the observers permanently insane. What was thought to be a simple study in aerodynamics proved beyond the shadow of doubt that it was the flapping of trillions of tiny insect wings that generated all movement in the universe.
While the scientists were shrieking in mindless horror at the abomination that they created, a couple of the cleaning crew members decided to hop into the Dragonflier and take a quick cruise across the universe. They were never seen again and the French authorities quickly covered-up all information concerning this project."
 
That "back to basics" bitter is heady stuff and, particularly with faggots & pays, can lead to wondrous flights of fancy. You may have been visited by a little, um, brown fairy?

Another aeropile! - good old Thurston. Lovely eBook finds, particularly the Marquis's.
 
As part of the BHF 'off topic' police LOL,although a very informative thread you are sometimes going very much off topic so ,as space is at a premium on the forum,I
will be around to moderate the thread.Alberta
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top