The Postcard
A Valentines Series postcard that was posted in London on Friday the 17th. November 1905 to:
Miss A. E. Richards,
Boshco Villa,
Harwell,
Nr. Steventon,
Berks.
The message on the divided back was as follows:
"Very pleased to get
your letter. I am writing
to you, but want this to
catch the first post.
Yours,
Berty."
Lady Elizabeth & Joseph Nightingale
In St Michael's chapel, off the north transept of Westminster Abbey, is a remarkable monument commemorating Lady Elizabeth Nightingale and her husband.
Elizabeth was born in 1704, the eldest of three daughters of Viscount Tamworth, Earl Ferrers (d. 1729) and his wife Mary.
On 24th. June 1725 Elizabeth married Joseph Gascoigne (1695-1752), son of the Reverend Joseph Gascoigne, Vicar of Enfield in Middlesex. He assumed the surname of Nightingale on becoming heir to his kinsman Sir Robert Nightingale.
Of their three sons, Washington, Joseph and Robert, only Washington survived his father, but then only by two years.
Elizabeth died on 17th August 1731 following a premature birth caused by the shock of a violent flash of lightning. This child, also called Elizabeth, survived and later married Wilmot Vaughan, 1st Earl of Lisburne and died (also in childbirth) in 1755.
Elizabeth and Joseph are buried in a vault in the north ambulatory nearby.
The Monument
The monument was not erected until 1761, and gives an incorrect date of death for Lady Nightingale. The inscription reads:
'Here rest the ashes of Joseph Gascoigne Nightingale
of Mamhead in the county of Devon, who died July the
20th. 1752 aged 56.
And of Lady Elizabeth his wife, daughter and coheir of
Washington Earl Ferrers; who died August the 17th.
1734 aged 27. Their only son Washington Gascoigne
Nightingale, in memory of their virtues, did by his last
will order this monument to be erected.'
The monument is by the French sculptor Louis-François Roubiliac (1702 – 1762) who worked in England. He was one of the four most prominent sculptors in London working in the rococo style. Roubiliac was described by Margaret Whinney as:
"Probably the most accomplished
sculptor ever to work in England".
The monument depicts the skeleton of Death emerging from his prison to aim his deadly dart at the dying figure of Elizabeth above. She is held up by her husband who, in horror, tries to ward off the stroke of death.
The figure of Death has lost its lower jaw and the spear is a later wooden replacement.
The idea for this image may have come from a dream that Elizabeth's brother in law (the Earl of Huntingdon) had experienced when a skeleton had appeared at the foot of his bed, which then crept up under the bedclothes between husband and wife.
John Wesley called the monument one of the finest in the Abbey, saying "the marble seems to speak". The famous American writer, Washington Irving, declared it:
"Among the most renowned
achievements of modern art."
It is said that one night a robber broke into the Abbey, but was so horrified at seeing the figure of Death in the moonlight that he dropped his crowbar and fled in terror. The crowbar was displayed for many years beside the monument, but it no longer remains.
A terracotta model of the memorial by the sculptor is on display in the new Queen's Diamond Jubilee Galleries in the Abbey triforium.
William Troy (Abolitionist)
So what else happened on the day that Berty posted the card?
Well, the 17th. November 1905 marked the death at the age of 78 in Camden, New Jersey of the Reverend William Troy.
William, who was born in Essex County, Virginia, on the 10th. March 1827, was a Baptist minister and writer associated with the Underground Railroad in America.
The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was a network of clandestine routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early- to mid-19th. century. It was used by enslaved African Americans, primarily to escape into free states and Canada.
The network was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The enslaved who risked escape and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the "Underground Railroad".
Various other routes led to Mexico, where slavery had been abolished, and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade. An earlier escape route running south toward Florida, then a Spanish possession (except 1763–1783), existed from the late 17th. century until approximately 1790. However, the network now generally known as the Underground Railroad began in the late 18th. century.
It mainly ran north, and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. One estimate suggests that by 1850, approximately 100,000 enslaved people had escaped to freedom via the network.
The Life of William Troy
Troy's mother was a free black woman who had married, then bought and set free, her husband.
Troy became a confirmed Christian at the age of 13, although he was discriminated against in church because he was an African American. He was baptized into the Baptist church, but he was surprised to hear that the deacons and the church pastor were giving sermons to justify their own personal trade in slaves.
The pastor would sell members of his own congregation. Troy and his wife left Virginia in disgust in March 1848, and moved to Cincinnati.
In his new home, Reverend Troy was said to be the only "slave preacher" who was qualified to preach when he started. He was first a pastor at a church in Amherstburg in southern Canada, before settling in nearby Windsor, Ontario.
In 1853 he held prayer meetings that led to the laying of a foundation stone for a church in Windsor in 1858. Troy founded the "First Baptist Church" in Windsor although the first local Baptist church had been established a few years before.
Troy published a book of stories taken from the lives of slaves who had escaped from the United States to Canada. His book has been cited by historians as counter-evidence to the idea that slaves escaped and were smuggled across America by white activists.
Troy gives examples of slaves who escaped north without the aid of the Underground Railroad. He described how John Hedgeman was helped to freedom by black slaves and free people, who risked arrest for assisting those escaping north to Canada.
Troy traveled to Great Britain to raise funds for his church, where he gave lectures to anti-slavery societies. He traveled with William M. Mitchell, and was mentioned in the latter's book. Troy also traveled throughout Europe, Jamaica and Haiti.