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Rob's photograph really.
I had a hand in the direction though.
No bovines were harmed in the creation of this shot.
Den of Imagination - Your Miniature Painting Service
We are a registered studio in Torun, Poland. We have been in line of work since 2008. Our still growing staff of painters and sculptors is ready to work on any project you can imagine!
We are credible, solid and reliable. We work best with large commissions and we guarantee fast service.
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Please attribute to Lorie Shaull if used elsewhere.
"Scaffold," a wood & steel sculpture by the artist Sam Durant, was a composite of the representations of 7 historical gallows used in US state-sanctioned executions by hanging between 1859 and 2006. One of them being the gallows constructed in Mankato, Minnesota to simultaneously hang 38 Dakota men on December 26, 1862 on orders signed by President Lincoln following the U.S.-Dakota War. The Mankato execution is the largest one-day execution in US history.
Some additional information on the context of historical events surrounding the Mankato hanging:
www.mprnews.org/story/2017/05/30/why-scaffold-struck-so-f...
The names of the 38 Dakota men executed in Mankato on December 26, 1862:
1. Ti-hdo’-ni-ca (One Who Jealousy Guards His Home)
2. Ptan Du-ta (Scarlet Otter)
3. O-ya’-te Ta-wa (His people)
4. Hin-han’-sun-ko-yag-ma-ni (One who Walks Clothed in Owl Feathers)
5. Ma-za Bo-mdu (Iron Blower)
6. Wa-hpe Du-ta (Scarlet Leaf)
7. Wa-hi’na (I Came)
8. Sna Ma-hi (Tinkling Walker)
9. Hda In-yan-ka (Rattling Runner)
10. Do-wan’-s’a (Sings A Lot)
11. He-pan (Second Born Male Child)
12. Sun-ka Ska (White Dog)
13. Tun-kan’ I-ca’hda Ma-ni (One Who Walks by His Grandfather)
14. Wa-kin’-yan-na (Little Thunder)
15. I-te’ Du-ta (Scarlet Face)
16. Ka-mde’-ca (Broken to Pieces)
17. He pi’ da (Third Born Male)
18. Ma-hpi’-ya A-i’-na-zin (Cut Nose)
19. Henry Milord
20. Cas-ke’-da (First Born)
21. Baptiste Campbell
22. Ta-te’ Ka-ga (Wind Maker)
23. He in’-kpa (The Tip of the Horn)
24. Hypolite Auge
25. Na-pe’-sni (Fearless)
26. Wa-kan Tan-ka (Great Spirit)
27. Tun-kan’ K o-yag I-na’-zin (One Who Stands Cloaked in Stone)
28. Ma-ka’-ta I-na’ (One Who Stands on Earth)
29. Ma-za Ku-te Ma-ni (One Who Shoots As He Walks)
30. Ta-te’ Hdi-da (Wind Comes Home)
31. Wa-si’-cun (White Man)
32. A-i’-ca-ge (To Grow Upon)
33. Ma-hu’-we-hi (He Comes for Me)
34. Ho-i’-tan-in Ku (Returning Clear Voice)
35. Ce-tan’ Hun-ka’ (Elder Hawk)
36. Can-ka-hda (Near the Woods)
37. Hda’-hin-hde (Sudden Rattle)
38. O-ya’-te A-ku’ (He Brings the People)
The names of the 2 Dakota men subsequently executed on November 11, 1865 at Fort Snelling for participating in the US-Dakota War:
Wa-kan-o-zhan-zhan (Medicine Bottle)
Sakpedan (Shakopee, Little Six)
Execution Chamber at the Fremantle Prison (Western Australia) complete with the Hangman's Noose, a dunking chair and curiously enough, a stand fan! Had to sneak this picture with a cellphone camera.
On Explore - Aug 16, 2004 #78
Den of Imagination - Your Miniature Painting Service
We are a registered studio in Torun, Poland. We have been in line of work since 2008. Our still growing staff of painters and sculptors is ready to work on any project you can imagine!
We are credible, solid and reliable. We work best with large commissions and we guarantee fast service.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEBSITE: denofimagination.com/
YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/user/denofimagination
SHOP: shop.denofimagination.com/
TWITTER: Twitter.com/doiStudio
FLICKER: www.flickr.com/photos/97996892@N07/
PINTEREST: www.pinterest.com/denstudio/
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/doiphoto/
Radu Portocala:
"L'execution des Ceausescu - La verite sur une revolution en trompe-l'oeil"
Editions Larousse, Paris 2009
ISBN: 978-2-03-584830-7
153 pages, 11,40 Euro
--------------------------------------------
"The execution of the Ceausescus - the truth about a faked revolution"
"Executia sotilor Ceausescu - advearul despre o revolutie trucata"
---------------------------------
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
PROLOGUE - The rise of a Satrap
Ch. 1 - An End foretold
Ch. 2 - Game of Mirrors
Ch. 3 - Timisoara the Genuine Dead
Ch. 4 - Timisoara the Fake Massacre
Ch. 5 - Dictator without Power
Ch. 6 - Renaissance in a Blood Bath
Ch. 7 - The Double Death of Ceausescu
EPILOGUE - The Silence of History
NOTES
---------------------------------------------
TABLA DE MATERII
PROLOG - Drumul spre putere al unui satrap
Cap.. 1 - Un sfarsit anuntat cu anticipatie
Cap. 2 - Joc de oglinzi
Cap. 3 - Timisoara - adevaratii morti
Cap. 4 - Timisoara - simulacrul masacrului
Cap. 5 - Dictator neputincios
Cap. 6 - Renastere in baie de sange
Cap. 7 - Dubla executie alui Ceausescu
EPILOG - Tacerea istoriei
NOTE
www.romanianstudies.org/content/2010/03/radu-portocala-ex...
Director Theophilus Raynsford Mann
~ a Taiwanese social reformer, philosopher, photographer, and film director
“Do Everything for My People”
馬天亮導演
~ 臺灣的社會改革者，哲學家，攝影師，和電影導演
《造福人民》
SUMMARY
Theophilus Raynsford Mann is a naturalist, occultist, Buddhist and Taoist. In 1982, Mann developed a technique for abstract photography, applied “Rayonism” into photographic works. Mann staged 32 individual, extraordinary exhibitions around Taiwan, who was the first exhibitor around Formosa. Mann’s works is the beginning of modernization in the modern abstract arts in the world. At the University of Oxford, Mann’s attractive topic was “A View of Architectural History: Towns through the Ages from Winchester through London Arrived at Oxford in England”; also an author at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan in the United States; an alumnus from Christ Church College at the University of Oxford in England, the University of Glamorgan in Wales, and National Taiwan University in Taipei on Taiwan. Mann’s works have been quoted by the scholars many times, making Mann one of the highly cited technological, artistic, and managing public administrators in the academia. Mann was listed in “Taiwan Who’s Who In Business” © 1984, 1987, 1989 Harvard Management Service.
Early Life and Record of Genealogy
Theophilus Raynsford Mann possesses both Taiwanese and German surnames from birth. Usually, whenever anyone asks Mann about where he comes from, he would reply “Formosa” as he grew up and was educated in the Far East and lives in Taiwanese and Japanese lifestyles. Moreover, he often teaches and educates younger generations based on the methods of the Far Eastern teaching he experienced when he was young, though he does not oppose the Western ways of teaching and thinking. Mann takes great pride in his roots, which go back 150 years (since 1864); Mann’s ancestry originates and creates generations, and prepares younger generations to succeed their personality and ethical standards and integrity.
Education in Taiwan and a Brief of Latest Generation of History in Taiwan / Formosa
In 1980, Mann obtained his postgraduate certificate from the Graduate Institute of Electrical Engineering of National Taiwan University in Taipei; successfully completed another graduate studies in Information dBase III Plus and Taiwanese Traditional Chinese Mandarin Information System at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung in 1989.
In history, the Portuguese explorers discovered and called the island (Taiwan), “Formosa” (meaning “Beautiful Island”) in 1590. They are non-Chinese people; it was long a Chinese and Japanese pirate base. Fighting continued, between its original inhabitants of Taiwanese and the Chinese settlers, into the 19th century. In 1894-95 first Sino-Japanese War that ended in Manchus of the Qing (Ching) dynasty defeat, the late Manchu Qing Government forced to cede Formosa to Japan. This result was made by the Treaty of Shomonoseki in 1895 and remained under Japanese control until the end of the Second World War. Early on, Taiwan was conquered by the Qing in 1683 and for the first time became part of older China dynasty. However, today, the home country of Mann’s origin has around 165 institutions (93 universities) of higher education, which now has one of the best-educated populations in Asia. Among the major public (state) ones are the National Taiwan University (NTU) at Taipei, and National Sun Yat-Sen University (NSYSU) at Kaohsiung. NSYSU is also called National Chun-Shan University; according to Times Higher Education 2010-2011, NSYSU ranks as the 3rd university in Taiwan, 21st in Asia, and 163rd worldwide. National Taiwan University is ranked 51 to 60 ranks on Times Higher Education World University Rankings - Top Universities by Reputation 2013, the United Kingdom (see www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/...); King's College London (KCL) (21st in the world and 6th in Europe in the 2010, QS World University Rankings), the University of London, and University of Southern California (is one of the world's leading private research universities, located in the heart of Los Angeles), afterward.
Backing to Mann’s early school-time of Taiwan Provincial Kaohsiung Industrial Senior High School (Kaohsiung Municipal Kaohsiung Industrial High school), the professional technical education, which is equivalent to Advanced Level General Certificate of Education, commonly referred to as an A-level in the United Kingdom; China Electronic Engineering College, the distance learning programme, which is in equivalence as UK’s Diploma of Higher Education / Undergraduate Diploma (as an Associate Degree in the United States). An additional, his middle education was taught by the Kaohsiung Municipal Chihjh (Ci Sian) Junior High School; and Kaohsiung Municipal San Min Elementary School was his first school in Taiwan.
Early Career
In 1989, Mann instituted Mann’s Office of Electrical Engineer, he settled himself in electrical technology and industries as a chief engineer in his early years. He put his professional and precise knowledge to good account in business management. A formal business management with business relationship established to provide for regular services, dealings, and other commercial transactions and deed. He had many customers having a business and credit relationship with his firm then he was a successful engineer.
Study Abroad and Immigration into the United Kingdom
In 1998, Mann studied abroad when he arrived in Great Britain; he studied at School of Built Environment, the University of Glamorgan (Prifysgol Morgannwg) in Merthyr Tydfil, Pontypridd, Wales for a master of science in real estate appraisal. Until the summer of 2000, Mann completed an academic course on “Towns through the Ages” from Christ Church College at the University of Oxford (is ranked the 2nd place worldwide on The Times Higher Education, World University Rankings 2012-2013 www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/...) in England. Afterward, Mann immigrated into the United Kingdom in the early year of 2004.
PHILOSOPHICAL VIEWS
Mann is a naturalist; he trusts spiritual naturalism and naturalistic spirituality, which teaches that “the unknown” created this wonderful world. “The unknown” arranged the nature with its law so that everything in nature is kept balanced and in order. However, human beings failed to control themselves, deliberately went against the law of nature, and resulted in disasters, which we deserved. He also is an occultist, a Taoist, and a Buddhist; but in Britain, he frequently goes to Christian and Catholic churches, where he makes friends with pastors and fathers as well as churchgoers. In his mind, he recognizes “Belief is truth held in the mind; faith is a fire in the heart”. He is always a freethinker, does not accept traditional, social, and religious teaching, but based on his ideas: a thought or conception that potentially and actually exists in his mind as a product of mental activity - his opinion, conviction, and principle. If people have not come across eastern classics and philosophy, we are afraid that people would never understand Theophilus Raynsford Mann. People cannot judge an eastern philosopher based on western ways of thinking. He studies I Ching discovering eastern classics of ancient origin consisting of 64 interrelated hexagrams along with commentaries. The hexagrams embody Taoist philosophy by describing all nature and human endeavour in terms of the interaction of yin and yang, and the classics may be consulted as an oracle.
Back in the 1990s when Mann just arrived at England, he had been offered places to do Ph.D. and LL.M. degrees (degree in Law and Politics of the European Union) by several western professors in the Great Britain. He has met all the requirements for postgraduate admissions to study at UK’s universities.
During his time at Oxford, he learnt a lot of British culture and folk-custom while carrying out research with many British and Western professors, experts, and archaeologists. This proves that Mann understands various aspects in British society, culture, and lifestyles. Of course, he does not fully understand about the perspectives of thinking of a typical British. For example, what would be the most valuable in life for a British person? What would a British want to gain from life? What is the goal in life for a British? Is it fortune or a lover? Alternatively, perhaps honour? On the other hand, maybe being able to travel around the world and see the world?
FAIRNESS and JUSTICE
As Theophilus Raynsford Mann’s saying are:
“Touching Fairness and Justice”
Feel good about themselves, but do not know the sufferings of the people...
Who can get easy life like them?
What is profile of modern society?
What type and style is truly solemn for this society identify?
Where “the characterization” is? Who can see? Did you see it?
《感動的公平與正義》
自我感覺良好, 不知民間疾苦...
誰能得到安逸的生活如同他們一樣？
這是個什麼樣子的社會？
這個社會認定什麼樣的類型和風格是真正莊重的?
「特徵」在那裡？誰可以看到？你看到了嗎？
Jurisprudence and Political Philosophy and Perspectives
Mann ever studied judicial review and governmental action, the impact of law and legal techniques, constitutional mechanisms for the protection of basic rights, and ensuring the integrity of commercial activity, the impact of law and legal techniques on government, policymaking, and administration, as well as the creation of markets. He tries to understand these critical trends in the political development of modern state. Mann will combine both theoretical and empirical approaches, and the conditions for democratic transition and the nature of state development in the ‘post-industrial’ era of globalisation and economic integration.
According as Mann’s legal experiences, he comprehend that “the knowledge of the law is like a deep well, out of which each man draught according to the strength of his understanding”, and, law and arbitrary power are in eternal enmity. He is also sure law and institutions are constantly tending to gravitate like clocks; they must be occasionally cleansed, and wound up, and set to true time.
The government issues a decree - an authoritative order having the force of law, which charged with putting into effect a country's laws and the administering of its functions. Any of the officials promulgate a law or put into practice relating to the government charged with the execution and administration of the nation's laws then they announce and carry out the creation of any order or new policy that will be responsible for the people.
Mann had knowledge in connexion with construction law; he also understands architectural arts, and as well learnt the forms by combining materials and parts include as an integral part concerning modern construct. I ever built urban buildings and rural architecture in different styles under new housing and building projects by the governmental administration and construction corporations.
Right now, Mann studies the problems caused by ethnic disputes and human armed conflicts in the modern society resulted code of mixed civil and criminal procedure. He wishes an agreement or a treaty to end human hostilities - the absence of war and other hostilities around the world. The interrelation and arrangement of freedom from quarrels and disagreement become harmonious relations living in peace with each other. Actually, erect peace in more friendly ways of making friendships for modern human society is comfortable in my ideal. It is like building monolithic architecture: houses and buildings for the people. Mann would like to do “something beautiful for `the unknown`”.
In the ethnic disagreement and armed conflicts as concerning the poor people and children notwithstanding they live through a bad environment on any of poor or crowded village or town in a particular manner - lived frugally. However, after years of industrialisation as a more educated population, becomes more aware of global plenum, continuing to be alive. Environmental groups are increasing and lobbing government will legislate to stop bad environmental and social practices. The establishments of human rights’ wide and untiring efforts will be alleviated people’s suffering. And as well the poor people shall meet and debate sustainable development and for a concerted government led action towards sustainability is an example that the younger generation are concerned for the future. It shall be making the younger easier for their life and make better on their lives, and help them to build a better future.
In present world, Mann really knows the full meanings of “Fundamental Human Rights and Equal Opportunities for the People”. He thinks ethics is the moral code governing the daily conduct of the individual toward those about him / her. It represents those rules or principles by which men and women live and work in a spirit of mutual confidence and service. Without going into the question of how an ethical code was formulated or why anybody should obey it, we can look at the matter in a common-sense fashion with reference to its influence upon our legal affairs. In brief, from the law point of view, a reputable ethical code embodies the qualities of accuracy, dependability, fair play, sound judgement, and service. It is based upon honesty.
No person can have an ethical code that concerns him / her alone. Living in society, as he / she must, a person encounters others whose rights must be respected as well as his / her own. An honest regard for the rights of others is an essential element of any decent code of ethics, and one that anyone must observe if anybody intends to follow that code. After all, ethics is not something apart from human beings. Indeed, there is no such thing apart from our actions and us. It is the duty, therefore, of every man and woman in legal affairs to see that his daily associations with others are truly in conformity with the plain meaning of the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not barratry, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not receive illegal fee and the rest”.
The knowledge Mann has, in connection with legal affairs, was usually come from his precious experiences of his past over ten year’s law and political careers. In an interval regarded as a distinct period of 1980s, he studied mixed civil and crime, and the code of mixed civil and criminal procedure for the problems caused by ethnic disputes and human armed conflicts in the modern society. He was especially one who maintains the language and customs of the group, and social security in Taiwan.
Since 30 July of 1988, Mann settled himself in law as a chief executive and scrivener at Central Legal, Real Estate, and Accounting Services Office; it is in the equivalent to a solicitor of the United Kingdom. The Office provided full legal, accounting, real estate, and commercial services to the public. He did his job as a person legally appointed by another to act as his or her agent in the transaction of business, specifically one qualified and licensed to act for plaintiffs and defendants in legal proceedings and affairs. Over and above Mann was a chairman and executive consultant at Taiwan Credit Information Company®, founded in 1994. The company offered services to the public in response to need and demand in the area of credit information.
Mann had excellent experiences in political and law work was pertaining to mixed civil and crime, the code of mixed civil and criminal procedure, construction, and commercial law abroad. The experiences of legal services related to the rights of private individuals and legal proceedings concerning these rights as distinguished. In the criminal proceedings, he did many cases for the defendants. Although an act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it and for which punishment is imposed upon conviction; but he also laid legal claim, required as useful, just, proper, or necessary to the defendants under the human rights in the meantime. This provision ensures to the defendant a real voice in the subject.
The men whose judgement we respect are those who do not allow prejudices, preferences, or personalities to influence their decisions. Profit and self-aggrandisement are likewise ignored in their determination to reach an equitable and fair settlement. What are the basic principles upon which good judgement is founded? A keen intellect, a normal emotionally, a through understanding of human nature, experience of law work, sincerity, and integrity.
Developed a Technique for Abstract Photography and Abstractionist
In 1982, Mann developed a technique for abstractive photography, which applied “rayonism” to the photographic works. In November of 1984, Mann was 26-year-old, he instructed many professors and students of National Taiwan Normal University in photography of abstract impressionism and rayonnisme in Taipei, Taiwan. The word “rayonnisme” is French for rayonism - a style of abstract painting developed in 1911 in Russia.
Photographic Exhibitions
Theophilus Raynsford Mann Photographic Exhibition of “Rayonnisme / Rayonism” Tour - Invitational Exhibition of Taiwan 1983-84.
一九八三〜八四年中華民國臺灣 馬天亮攝影巡迴邀請展
Theophilus Raynsford Mann Photographic Exhibition of Rayonism (32 individual exhibitions) 1983~1985.
馬天亮『光影』攝影特展（個人展32場）1983〜1985年.
Mann staged 32 individual, extraordinary exhibitions and annual special exhibitions on photography of abstractive image and Rayonnisme around Taiwan / Formosa. Mann was the first exhibitor around the country. All of the invited displays were by the Taiwan’s Government, cultural and artistic organisations, and sponsors. Mann’s earliest exhibition took place in the National Taiwan Arts Education Center (Museum) on 19 December 1983 when Mann was 25 years old; Mann was the youngest exhibitor in the history of the Center in any solo exhibitions. The Center that was opened in March 1957, kept a collection of Mann’s work. It is currently updating the Center’s internal organisation and strengthening co-operation with leading centers and museums around the world. Meanwhile, it widened the center’s scope to increase its emphasis on Taiwan’ regional culture and folk arts.
Modernization in the Modern Abstract Arts of Taiwan
Mann’s works is the beginning of modernization in the modern abstract arts of Taiwan, China and greater Chinese society in the world. The use of “modernisation” as a concept that is opposed to “Traditional” of “Conservative” ideas began with the approach of the 20th century. It spreads rapidly through academic circles, and was broadly accepted as a means to reform society. Chinese Manchu Qing (Ching) dynasty’s first steps toward modernisation began in the Tung-chih era (1862-1874) with the “Self-Empowerment Movement”. During the late 19th century, as late Manchu dynasty was confronted on all sides by foreign aggression, voices throughout society debated the most effective means to reform and strengthen the country. Some advocated “combining the best of East and West”, while others went so far as to call for “complete Westernisation”. Taiwan was at the centre of these waves of reform. Faced with direct threats against the island by foreign enemies, the Chinese Ching dynasty court took special steps to push Taiwan’s modernisation.
In a role just like that of a gardener wanting to create a rich and fertile environment for the seeds of culture, one in which Mann may sprout, grow and bloom. Mann aims to provide an educational stimulus for society by introducing his works - Mann can express the neo-romantic spirit deftly from various creations and supporting international artistic exchanges. Mann believes that the first step in creating such a new and independent state is the real emergence of culture and arts, for which the art and science of designing and erecting buildings, and fine arts (including photography and motion picture) of the civilization is a good measurement of success. For the foreseeable future, Mann should be continuing to forge ahead, working diligently and unceasingly towards its mission of raising China and Formosa / Taiwan’s culture in his spare time.
Became an Author and a Scholar
In 1980, Theophilus Raynsford Mann completed his first book - scenario original “The Soul's Sentimentalizing”, also named: “Hun Yun : Jin Qi Tu Rui” 電影原著《魂韻》(衿契吐蕊) then Mann was at the age of 22. In 1983, The General Library of the University of California, Berkeley in the United States of America, collected and kept Mann’s writings - scenario original 「魂韻 : 衿契吐蕊」“Hun Yun : jin qi tu rui”, included a musical composition of his own – “Sonate Nr. 1 C-dur op. 3 für Klavier (piano)”, composed on 3rd April 1977 then Mann was 18 years old. The works were published in 1980; the theme was based on “The Soul's Sentimentalizing”. Another masterpiece was an Album of Academic Work for News Publication “Theophilus Raynsford Mann Photographic Exhibition of Rayonnisme / Rayonism”, published in 1985. The Hathi Trust Digital Library, the University of Michigan also collected and kept Mann’s writings.
Authorship
Mann’s articles and writings were published in more than 200 different kinds of domestic and foreign magazines, newspapers, and periodicals, in the period between May of 1972 and 1990s. It was all started when Mann was just 13-year-old. Many of which have been very influential. These have been quoted by Western and Eastern scholars many times in the last few years, making Mann one of the highly cited technological, artistic, and managing public administrators in the world in the late 20th and early 21st century. The Ministry of the Interior in Taiwan had registered Mann’s professional writings and given him two certificates of copyright. The numbers are 33080 and 33081 on 4th July of 1985; and Taiwan’s Gazette of The Presidential Office issue No. 4499, featured his writings on 4th September 1985.
Became an Academic and Film Director
Today, Mann is a professor at Space Time Life Research Academy, and a photographer, film director, and computer engineer now live and work in London.
Director Works:
FILMS:
Experimental Film “New Image for the Spring” © 1982
Documentary Film “Rayonnisme” © 2011
“The Soul's Sentimentalizing” of the feature film is based on the scenario original “The Soul's Sentimentalizing” (preparation)
FASHION SHOWS:
New Image for the Spring of Shapely Models International © 1982
High Lights on the Summer and Fall Fashion of Shapely Models Int’l © 1982
ART EXHIBITIONS:
The Cadillac Club International Fine Arts Exhibition © 1981
The Cinematic & Photographic Arts Salon and the Hall of the Arts, Pegasus Academy of Arts © 1981
Musician Work:
MUSIC COMPOSITION:
Sonate Nr. 1 C-dur op. 3 für Klavier (piano) © 1977, © 1980, © 1981, © 1983, the theme was based on “The Soul's Sentimentalizing”.
PHOTOGRAPHIC ALBUMS:
Portrait and Landscape in France © 2000
Portrait and Landscape in Scotland © 2001
Portrait and Landscape in England © 2009
Portrait at Queen Mary, University of London © 2010
Rayonism of London © 2011
Portrait at The University of Nottingham, United Kingdom © 2011
Snowy London © 2012
Portrait at King's College London © 2013
BOOKS:
Scenario Original 「魂韻」(衿契吐蕊) “Hun yun: jin qi tu rui” © December 1980, © 1981, © 1983 (Date of First Publication: 31 December 1980, Second Edition on 29 July 1981, Date of Revision: Revised Edition on 8 May 1983), Languages: Chinese (traditional), and English language.
“Album of the Cadillac Club International Fine Arts Exhibition” © 1981
“Album of the Cinematic & Photographic Arts Salon and the Hall of the Arts, Pegasus Academy of Arts” © 1981
“Album of New Image for the Spring of Shapely Models International” © 1982
“Album of High Lights on the Summer and Fall Fashion of Shapely Models Int’l” © 1982
“Romantic Carol” © 1982
Album of Academic Work for News Publication: “Theophilus Raynsford Mann Photographic Exhibitions of Rayonnisme” © May 1985
New version of scenario original “The Soul's Sentimentalizing” (to be published)
「曾經輝煌到頂天立地」(individual biography, to be published)
“My Life, My History, and My Love” (based on a legend, to be published, a film scenario will be developed later)
「感動的公平與正義」“Touching Fairness and Justice” (political science and social studies, to be published)
Research Interests:
University of Oxford
Research Studies in Archaeology:
Mann’s attractive topic was “A View of Architectural History: Towns through the Ages from Winchester through London Arrived at Oxford in England”.
National Taiwan University
Graduate Certificate,
Graduate Institute of Electrical Engineering:
Mann’s monograph of seminar was “Applied the sequence control in the electric power distribution engineering”.
University of Glamorgan
M.Sc. Course,
Master of Science in Real Estate Appraisal:
Mann’s thesis - major subject, with relevant construction law was “The Assignment is under Economics of Construction Management in Architecture”.
National Sun Yat-Sen University
Postgraduate Certificate,
Postgraduate Studies in Computing:
Mann’s required subject was Information dBase III Plus and Taiwanese Traditional Mandarin Chinese Information System. He combined academic course work and practical laboratory sessions in “Applied Mandarin Phonetic Symbols into Traditional Taiwanese Personal Computer and Its Information System”.
Associations:
Member of The Kaohsiung Life Line Association since 11 January 1979, an association established in the USA.
Member of The Society of Youth Writers, Tien (Catholic) Educational Center, Taipei since 1980.
Since 1980, a member of Chinese Taipei Film Archive (CTFA, National Film Archive, Taiwan; founded in 1978), The Motion Picture Foundation, R.O.C. (member of Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film, FIAF; The International Federation of Film Archives was founded in Paris in 1938 by the British Film Institute, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Cinémathèque Française and the Reichsfilmarchiv in Berlin.)
Commissioner of the cinema, photography, radio, and television committee of The Culture and Arts Association (Chinese Writers and Artists Association) of Taiwan ever since September 1983.
Classic member, the membership is equivalent to a doctorate membership of the Chinese Institute of Electrical Engineering since 23 March 1984.
On 15 March 1989, Mann promoted and founded the Consortium Juridical Person Mr. Theophilus Raynsford Mann Social Benefit Foundation 財團法人馬天亮先生社會公益基金會籌備處 (Social Charity 社會慈善事業) in Taiwan.
near.archives.gov.tw/cgi-bin/near2/nph-redirect?rname=tre...
Classic member, the membership is equal to a professor or associate professor of The Chinese Institute of Engineers since 30 September 1991.
Honours:
Listed on ‘Taiwan Who’s Who In Business’, © 1984, © 1987, and © 1989 Harvard Management Service.
中華民國企業名人錄編纂委員會, 哈佛企業管理顧問公司.
On 26 August 1985, Mann was awarded a professional certificate of the Outdoor Artistry Activities issued by Education Bureau, Kaohsiung City Government, Taiwan. He acquired awards and certificates of honour about twenty times from National Taiwan Arts Education Center (Museum) on 24 December 1983; Kaohsiung Municipal Social Education Center on 17 March 1984, Kaohsiung Cultural Center, Taipei Cultural Center (Taipei Municipal Social Education Hall); and Taiwan Province Government, Taipei City Government, Kaohsiung City Government, and many cultural centres and art galleries, and so on.
Careers:
Honorary Professor at Space Time Life Research Academy, 7 June 2012 to present; Professor at Space Time Life Research Academy, 1 September 2011 to 1 June 2012 in London, United Kingdom:
Academia,
Teaching and Research:
business management and consultant, political philosophy, Chinese classics, Chinese humanities, modern Chinese language and literature, photography (portrait, fashion, commercial, digital, architectural, abstract photography), visual arts and filmmaking.
教學與研究：
企業管理及顧問、政治哲學、中華經典 (古典漢學、文學、藝術、語言) 、中華人文、中華現代語言與文學、攝影 (人像、時裝、商業、數位/數碼、建築、抽象攝影) ，視覺藝術和製作影片。
Consultant and Translator at Eternal Life Consultants of Immigration and Translations Services, 10 March 2004 to present in London, United Kingdom:
consultants of immigration, translations, and legal services.
永生移民顧問翻譯服務社的移民諮詢顧問和翻譯：
移民事務，翻譯和法律服務。
Computer Hardware & Networking Engineer at Mann Office of Electrical Engineer, 8 March 2004 to present in London, United Kingdom:
Computer Engineering and Network Services. Repairing of Motherboards, Monitors, Power Supplies, CD-ROM Drives; UPS, Hard Disk Drives, H.D.D Data Recovery; BIOS Programming, and all types of Computer Hardware and Software Solutions.
計算機工程和網絡服務。維修主機板，顯示器，電源供應器，光碟機/光盘驱动器，不斷電系統，硬碟/硬盘，硬盤數據恢復，基本輸入輸出系統編程，以及所有類型的電腦/計算機硬體/硬件和軟體/軟件解決方案。
Film Director and Photographer at Shapely Studio of Creative and Cultural Industries, 2 April 2007 to present in London, United Kingdom:
1) Photo, Video and Film Production; 2) Graphic Design, Web Design, Social Networking, Social Media and Advertising; 3) Architectural Design and Interior Design.
Reformer and Philosopher at Taiwanese Social Reformer and Philosopher, 7 April 2012 (location: Los Angeles, California) to present in London, United Kingdom:
Social Reform in Taiwan
www.facebook.com/twreform/info
《魂韻》(衿契吐蕊) - 馬天亮22歲寫的電影原著。Theophilus Raynsford Mann (TianLiang Maa) wrote “Hun Yun” (Jin Qi Tu Rui), scenario original “The Soul’s Sentimentalizing” © 1980, 1981, 1983, was at the age of 22.
Website
mtltwp.pixnet.net/album/set/1265174
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Sonate Nr. 1 C-dur op. 3 für Klavier (piano) by Theophilus Raynsford Mann (TianLiang Maa 馬天亮) © 1977, © 1980, © 1981, © 1983. The Sonate composed on 3rd April 1977 then Mann was 18-year-old. The work was published in 1980; the theme was based on “The Soul's Sentimentalizing”.
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In this television screen grab taken from Iraqi national television station Al-iraqia, a video shows the moments leading up to the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein standing on the gallows as he prepared for hanging Dec. 30, 2006 in Baghdad
Silver denarius
Minted after Nero's accession, the second coin presents mother and son facing each other. Only Agrippina's names and titles appear on the front, stressing her continued pre-eminence.
[British Museum]
Nero: the Man Behind the Myth
(May - Oct 2021)
Nero is known as one of Rome's most infamous rulers, notorious for his cruelty, debauchery and madness.
The last male descendant of the emperor Augustus, Nero succeeded to the throne in AD 54 aged just 16 and died a violent death at 30. His turbulent rule saw momentous events including the Great Fire of Rome, Boudicca's rebellion in Britain, the execution of his own mother and first wife, grand projects and extravagant excesses.
Drawing on the latest research, this major exhibition questions the traditional narrative of the ruthless tyrant and eccentric performer, revealing a different Nero, a populist leader at a time of great change in Roman society.
Through some 200 spectacular objects, from the imperial palace in Rome to the streets of Pompeii, follow the young emperor’s rise and fall and make up your own mind about Nero. Was he a young, inexperienced ruler trying his best in a divided society, or the merciless, matricidal megalomaniac history has painted him to be?
Nero was the 5th emperor of Rome and the last of Rome’s first dynasty, the Julio-Claudians, founded by Augustus (the adopted son of Julius Caesar). Nero is known as one of Rome’s most infamous rulers, notorious for his cruelty and debauchery. He ascended to power in AD 54 aged just 16 and died at 30. He ruled at a time of great social and political change, overseeing momentous events such as the Great Fire of Rome and Boudica’s rebellion in Britain. He allegedly killed his mother and two of his wives, only cared about his art and had very little interest in ruling the empire.
Most of what we know about Nero comes from the surviving works of three historians – Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio. All written decades after Nero’s death, their accounts have long shaped our understanding of this emperor’s rule. However, far from being impartial narrators presenting objective accounts of past events, these authors and their sources wrote with a very clear agenda in mind. Nero’s demise brought forward a period of chaos and civil war – one that ended only when a new dynasty seized power, the Flavians. Authors writing under the Flavians all had an interest in legitimising the new ruling family by portraying the last of the Julio-Claudians in the worst possible light, turning history into propaganda. These accounts became the ‘historical’ sources used by later historians, therefore perpetuating a fabricated image of Nero, which has survived all the way to the present.
Nero was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on 15 December AD 37.
He was the son of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the Younger. Both Gnaeus and Agrippina were the grandchildren of Augustus, making Nero Augustus’ great, great grandson with a strong claim to power.
Nero was only two years old when his mother was exiled and three when his father died. His inheritance was taken from him and he was sent to live with his aunt. However, Nero’s fate changed again when Claudius became emperor, restoring the boy’s property and recalling his mother Agrippina from exile.
In AD 49 the emperor Claudius married Agrippina, and adopted Nero the following year. It is at this point that Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus changed his name to Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. In Roman times it was normal to change your name when adopted, abandoning your family name in favour of your adoptive father’s. Nero was a common name among members of the Claudian family, especially in Claudius’ branch.
Nero and Agrippina offered Claudius a politically useful link back to Augustus, strengthening his position.
Claudius appeared to favour Nero over his natural son, Britannicus, marking Nero as the designated heir.
When Claudius died in AD 54, Nero became emperor just two months before turning 17.
As he was supported by both the army and the senate, his rise to power was smooth. His mother Agrippina exerted a significant influence, especially at the beginning of his rule.
The Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio all claim that Nero, fed up with Agrippina’s interference, decided to kill her.
Given the lack of eyewitnesses, there is no way of knowing if or how this happened. However, this did not stop historians from fabricating dramatic stories of Agrippina’s murder, asserting that Nero tried (and failed) to kill her with a boat engineered to sink, before sending his men to do the job.
Agrippina allegedly told them to stab her in the womb that bore Nero, her last words clearly borrowed from stage plays.
It is entirely possible, as claimed by Nero himself, that Agrippina chose (or was more likely forced) to take her own life after her plot against her son was discovered.
Early in his rule, Nero had to contend with a rebellion in the newly conquered province of Britain.
In AD 60–61, Queen Boudica of the Iceni tribe led a revolt against the Romans, attacking and laying waste to important Roman settlements. The possible causes of the rebellion were numerous – the greed of the Romans exploiting the newly conquered territories, the recalling of loans made to local leaders, ongoing conflict in Wales and, above all, violence against the family of Prasutagus, Boudica’s husband and king of the Iceni.
Boudica and the rebels destroyed Colchester, London and St Albans before being heavily defeated by Roman troops. After the uprising, the governor of Britain Suetonius Paulinus introduced harsher laws against the Britons, until Nero replaced him with the more conciliatory governor Publius Petronius Turpilianus.
The marriage between Nero and Octavia, aged 15 and 13/14 at the time, was arranged by their parents in order to further legitimise Nero’s claim to the throne. Octavia was the daughter of the emperor Claudius from a previous marriage, so when Claudius married Agrippina and adopted her son Nero, Nero and Octavia became brother and sister. In order to arrange their marriage, Octavia had to be adopted into another family.
Their marriage was not a happy one. According to ancient writers, Nero had various affairs until his lover Poppaea Sabina convinced him to divorce his wife. Octavia was first exiled then executed in AD 62 on adultery charges. According to ancient writers, her banishment and death caused great unrest among the public, who sympathised with the dutiful Octavia.
No further motives were offered for Octavia’s death other than Nero’s passion for Poppaea, and we will probably never know what transpired at court. The fact that Octavia couldn’t produce an heir while Poppaea was pregnant with Nero’s daughter likely played an important role in deciding Octavia’s fate.
On 19 July AD 64, a fire started close to the Circus Maximus. The flames soon encompassed the entire city of Rome and the fire raged for nine days. Only four of the 14 districts of the capital were spared, while three were completely destroyed.
Rome had already been razed by flames – and would be again in its long history – but this event was so severe it came to be known as the Great Fire of Rome.
Later historians blamed Nero for the event, claiming that he set the capital ablaze in order to clear land for the construction of a vast new palace. According to Suetonius and Cassius Dio, Nero took in the view of the burning city from the imperial residence while playing the lyre and singing about the fall of Troy. This story, however, is fictional.
Tacitus, the only historian who was actually alive at the time of the Great Fire of Rome (although only 8 years old), wrote that Nero was not even in Rome when the fire started, but returned to the capital and led the relief efforts.
Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio all describe Nero as being blinded by passion for his wife Poppaea, yet they accuse him of killing her, allegedly by kicking her in an outburst of rage while she was pregnant.
Interestingly, pregnant women being kicked to death by enraged husbands is a recurring theme in ancient literature, used to explore the (self) destructive tendencies of autocrats. The Greek writer Herodotus tells the story of how the Persian king Cambyses kicked his pregnant wife in the stomach, causing her death. A similar episode is told of Periander, tyrant of Corinth. Nero is just one of many allegedly ‘mad’ tyrants for which this literary convention was used.
Poppaea probably died from complications connected with her pregnancy and not at Nero’s hands. She was given a lavish funeral and was deified.
Centred on greater Iran, the Parthian empire was a major political and cultural power and a long-standing enemy of Rome. The two powers had long been contending for control over the buffer state of Armenia and open conflict sparked again during Nero’s rule. The Parthian War started in AD 58 and, after initial victories and following set-backs, ended in AD 63 when a diplomatic solution was reached between Nero and the Parthian king Vologases I.
According to this settlement Tiridates, brother of the Parthian king, would rule over Armenia, but only after having travelled all the way to Rome to be crowned by Nero.
The journey lasted 9 months, Tiridates’ retinue included 3,000 Parthian horsemen and many Roman soldiers. The coronation ceremony took place in the summer of AD 66 and the day was celebrated with much pomp: all the people of Rome saw the new king of Armenia kneeling in front of Nero. This was the Golden Day of Nero’s rule
In AD 68, Vindex, the governor of Gaul (France), rebelled against Nero and declared his support for Galba, the governor of Spain. Vindex was defeated in battle by troops loyal to Nero, yet Galba started gaining more military support.
It was at this point that Nero lost the support of Rome’s people due to a grain shortage, caused by a rebellious commander who cut the crucial food supply from Egypt to the capital. Abandoned by the people and declared an enemy of the state by the senate, Nero tried to flee Rome and eventually committed suicide.
Following his death, Nero’s memory was condemned (a practice called damnatio memoriae) and the images of the emperor were destroyed, removed or reworked. However, Nero was still given an expensive funeral and for a long time people decorated his tomb with flowers, some even believing he was still alive.
After Nero’s death, civil war ensued. At the end of the so-called ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ (AD 69), Vespasian became emperor and started a new dynasty: the Flavians.
[Francesca Bologna, curator, for British Museum]
Taken in the British Museum
Knole (/noʊl/) is a British country house and former archbishop's palace owned by the National Trust. It is situated within Knole Park, a 1,000-acre (400-hectare) park located immediately to the south-east of Sevenoaks in west Kent. The house ranks in the top five of England's largest houses, under any measure used, occupying a total of 4 acres (1.6 ha).[1]
The current house dates back to the mid-15th century, with major additions in the 16th and, particularly, the early 17th centuries. Its Grade I listing reflects its mix of late-medieval to Stuart structures and particularly its central façade and state rooms. In 2019, an extensive conservation project, "Inspired by Knole", was completed to restore and develop the structures of the buildings and thus help to conserve its important collections.[2] The surrounding deer park has also survived with varying degrees of management in the 400 years since 1600.[3]
History
Knole in 1880
Location
Knole is located at the southern end of Sevenoaks, in the Weald of west Kent. To the north, the land slopes down to the Darenth valley and the narrow fertile pays of Holmesdale, at the foot of the North Downs.[4] The land around Sevenoaks itself has sandy soils, with woodland that was used in the Middle Ages in the traditional Wealden way, for pannage, rough pasture and timber.[5] The Knole estate is located on well-drained soils of the Lower Greensand.[6] It was close enough to London to allow easy access for owners who were involved with affairs of state, and it was on "sounde, parfaite, holesome grounde", in the words of Henry VIII.[7] It also had a plentiful supply of spring water.[8] The knoll of land in front of the house gives it a sheltered position. The wooded nature of the landscape could provide not only timber but also grazing for the meat needs of a grand household. Moreover, it made an excellent deer park, being emparked before the end of the 15th century. The dry valley between the house and the settlement of Sevenoaks also makes a natural deer course, for a combined race and hunt between two dogs and fallow deer.[9]
Early history
The earliest recorded owner of the core of the estate, in the 1290s, was Robert de Knole. However, nothing is known of any property he had on the estate. Two other families, the Grovehursts and the Ashburnhams, are known to have held the estate in succession until the 1360s, and the manor of Knole is first mentioned in 1364.[10] In 1419, the estate, which then spread over 800 acres, had been bought by Thomas Langley, Bishop of Durham, and by 1429, he had extended it to 1,500 acres.[11] The estate remained in the hands of the Langley family, it seems, until the mid-1440s when it had been acquired by James Fiennes, 1st Baron Saye and Sele. The circumstances of this transfer are not known, but it is clear that Lord Saye and Sele was also enlarging the estate by further, sometimes forcible, purchases of adjoining parcels of land. For example, in 1448 one Reginald Peckham was forced to sell land at Seal (at the north-eastern end of the current estate) to Saye "on threat of death".[12] Forcible land transfers recur in the later history of the house, including that between Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Henry VIII.
Thomas Cardinal Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury
Lord Saye and Sele seems to have begun a building project at Knole, but it was incomplete by his death in 1450.[13] His ruthless exploitation of his powerful position in Kent was a motivating factor in the Jack Cade Rebellion. Saye and Sele was executed on the authority of a hastily assembled commission initiated by Henry VI in response to the demands of Cade's rebels when they arrived in London.[14]
Archbishop Bourchier's House
James Fiennes's heir, William, second Baron Saye and Sele, sold the property for 400 marks (£266 13s 4d) in 1456 to Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury. He already had a substantial property in the area, Otford Palace, but the drier, healthier site of Knole attracted him.[15] Archbishop Bourchier probably began building work by making substantial renovations of an existing house. Between 1456 and 1486, Bourchier and his bailiff for the Otford bailiwick, John Grymesdyche, oversaw substantial building work on the current house.[16] The remodelled house must have been suitable for the archbishop by 1459, when he first stayed there, but he based himself there increasingly in his later years, particularly after 1480, when, at the age of about 69, he appointed a suffragan. In 1480, Thomas Cardinal Bourchier, as he had become in 1473, gave the house to the Archdiocese of Canterbury.[17]
In subsequent years, Knole House continued to be enlarged, with the addition of a large courtyard, now known as Green Court, and a new entrance tower. These were long thought to be the work of one of Bourchier's successors, but the detailed study by Alden Gregory suggests that Bourchier was responsible. He took advantage of the political stability that followed the restoration of Edward IV in 1471 to invest further in his property.[18]
Knole in the Tudor period
After Cardinal Bourchier's death in 1486, Knole was occupied by the next four archbishops: John Morton (1487–1500), Henry Deane (1501–1503), William Warham (1504–1532) and finally Thomas Cranmer.[19] Sir Thomas More appeared in revels there at the court of Archbishop Morton, whose cognizance (motto) of Benedictus Deus appears above and to either side of a large late Tudor fireplace there.[20] Henry VII was an occasional visitor, as in early October and midwinter 1490.[21]
Cardinal Bourchier had enclosed the park with a pale to make a deer park and it seems that Henry VIII used to visit Archbishop Warham to hunt deer.[22] After the death of Warham and before the appointment of his successor, Henry found his properties in nearby Otford and Knole useful residences for his daughter Mary, at the time of the protracted divorce from her mother, Catherine of Aragon. She was at Knole from 27 November 1532 to 5 March 1533.[23]
Warham's successor as archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, acquired all the temporalities of the See of Canterbury. However, these brought with them substantial debts and complex demands of land management, set against a backdrop of massive land transfers associated with the dissolution of the monasteries and broader assaults on church wealth. Cranmer was, therefore, unable to withstand repeated demands from Henry VIII for exchanges of land.[24] This was a long-term process stretching between 1536 and 1546, so that there is no need to imagine that Henry wanted Knole, specifically, for example as a deer park. In 1537 the manor of Knole, and five other manors and a number of advowsons and chantries largely forming the archbishop's bailiwick of Otford, were 'exchanged' with Henry VIII. In return, Cranmer received a package primarily consisting of former abbeys and priories between Canterbury and Dover.[25]
Knole was granted to Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, in August 1547 at the start of his nephew Edward VI's reign, but following Somerset's execution in 1549 it reverted to the Crown.[26] Mary gave the residence back to her Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Reginald Pole, but with their deaths in 1558 the house reverted to the Crown.
In the early 1560s, Elizabeth I gave Knole to Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, but he returned it in 1566. However, he had already granted a lease (1 February 1566) to one Thomas Rolf. Under this the 'manor and mansion-house' of Knole and the park, with the deer, and also Panthurst Park and other lands, were demised to the latter for the term of ninety-nine years at a rent of £200. The landlord was to do all repairs, and reserved the very unusual right (to himself and his heirs and assigns) to occupy the mansion-house as often as he or they chose to do so, but this right did not extend to the gate-house, nor to certain other premises. The tenant was given power to alter or rebuild the mansion-house at his pleasure.[27] Meanwhile, Elizabeth had possibly granted the estate to her cousin Thomas Sackville who, at that time, had the title of Lord Buckhurst.
There was competition at that time for the Knole estate. Rolf died very soon after, and the residue of the lease was bought by a wealthy local lawyer, John Lennard (of Chevening). He had gradually built up a network of properties around Sevenoaks, including the manor of Chevening, and adjoining property in the parishes of Knockholt and Halstead, all just to the north of Sevenoaks.[28] Lennard had already pressurised Rolf to sell the lease before his sudden death but, at the same point, Lord Buckhurst was also competing for the lease. Knole was a significant addition to Lennard's local land-holdings when it was confirmed, around 1570. However, Buckhurst was still able to insist upon some rights on the estate, including the ownership of at least some of the deer in the park.[29] John moved to Knole, but gave his son Sampson, Lord Dacre's son-in-law, a sub-lease.[30] The Knole estate was worth a great deal to Sampson, bringing him in 1599 rents worth £218, 6s and 8d.[31]
One of Sampson Lennard's daughters, Margaret, married Sir Thomas Waller, at one time lieutenant of Dover Castle and the younger son of an important Kent family, with their seat at Groombridge. An unusual term in the marriage covenant stipulated that Margaret and Thomas should live at Knole which is where Margaret gave birth to her son William, probably in 1598.[32] The baptism is recorded in the Sevenoaks parish register for 3 December. In 1613, William inherited his father's baronetcy, becoming Sir William Waller. He later commanded a parliamentary army with some distinction during the English Civil War. Wikipedia
SERIALS: THE EXECUTION
20" x 30 "
Aerosol + Acrylic on Canvas
"Interior information told me once I was a serial sexual predator and killer in my past life. I was never caught. I came into this lifetime wanting to be a cop. Perhaps, to balance things out, perhaps out of remorse and guilt.
I'm not a cop now. I'm a poet. I'm a painter. I practice magick. Perhaps, it is good that I don't need to repeat the life i had before. I keep things safe with fantasies. Or are they memories? I get thrilled and excited when I think i'm on the hunt. I look at strangers and I know exactly what I want to do with them. But I do not.
I write, I paint, I fantasize.
These things keep me safe and distanced from a very old itch, or at least that is what I believe. Perhaps, these things keep other people safe, from a deep and possible part of another me.
SERIALS attempts to capture this side of me, for whatever it's worth."
Pereira Irving Paul, March 2014
Nooses in the Apartheid Museum (South Africa) representing those who were executed or committed suicide in detention under the various terrorism laws.
26.11.13. The Bailiff of Stammheim, Hans Wirth, is beheaded in Baden on 28 September 1524 because of his Protestant faith. Detail from the bronze doors by Otto Münch (1885–1965), Zwingliportal, Grossmünster, Zürich, Switzerland
Coin, AD 55-6
Illustrating the shifting power dynamic between Nero and his mother during his early reign.
[From] prominence to Agrippina and relegates Nero to the reverse...mother and son facing each other...Agrippina behind. It demonstrates her waning influence and Nero's rising independence. Subsequently, Agrippina disappeared from his coinage altogether.
[British Museum]
Nero: the Man Behind the Myth
(May - Oct 2021)
Nero is known as one of Rome's most infamous rulers, notorious for his cruelty, debauchery and madness.
The last male descendant of the emperor Augustus, Nero succeeded to the throne in AD 54 aged just 16 and died a violent death at 30. His turbulent rule saw momentous events including the Great Fire of Rome, Boudicca's rebellion in Britain, the execution of his own mother and first wife, grand projects and extravagant excesses.
Drawing on the latest research, this major exhibition questions the traditional narrative of the ruthless tyrant and eccentric performer, revealing a different Nero, a populist leader at a time of great change in Roman society.
Through some 200 spectacular objects, from the imperial palace in Rome to the streets of Pompeii, follow the young emperor’s rise and fall and make up your own mind about Nero. Was he a young, inexperienced ruler trying his best in a divided society, or the merciless, matricidal megalomaniac history has painted him to be?
Nero was the 5th emperor of Rome and the last of Rome’s first dynasty, the Julio-Claudians, founded by Augustus (the adopted son of Julius Caesar). Nero is known as one of Rome’s most infamous rulers, notorious for his cruelty and debauchery. He ascended to power in AD 54 aged just 16 and died at 30. He ruled at a time of great social and political change, overseeing momentous events such as the Great Fire of Rome and Boudica’s rebellion in Britain. He allegedly killed his mother and two of his wives, only cared about his art and had very little interest in ruling the empire.
Most of what we know about Nero comes from the surviving works of three historians – Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio. All written decades after Nero’s death, their accounts have long shaped our understanding of this emperor’s rule. However, far from being impartial narrators presenting objective accounts of past events, these authors and their sources wrote with a very clear agenda in mind. Nero’s demise brought forward a period of chaos and civil war – one that ended only when a new dynasty seized power, the Flavians. Authors writing under the Flavians all had an interest in legitimising the new ruling family by portraying the last of the Julio-Claudians in the worst possible light, turning history into propaganda. These accounts became the ‘historical’ sources used by later historians, therefore perpetuating a fabricated image of Nero, which has survived all the way to the present.
Nero was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus on 15 December AD 37.
He was the son of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus and Agrippina the Younger. Both Gnaeus and Agrippina were the grandchildren of Augustus, making Nero Augustus’ great, great grandson with a strong claim to power.
Nero was only two years old when his mother was exiled and three when his father died. His inheritance was taken from him and he was sent to live with his aunt. However, Nero’s fate changed again when Claudius became emperor, restoring the boy’s property and recalling his mother Agrippina from exile.
In AD 49 the emperor Claudius married Agrippina, and adopted Nero the following year. It is at this point that Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus changed his name to Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. In Roman times it was normal to change your name when adopted, abandoning your family name in favour of your adoptive father’s. Nero was a common name among members of the Claudian family, especially in Claudius’ branch.
Nero and Agrippina offered Claudius a politically useful link back to Augustus, strengthening his position.
Claudius appeared to favour Nero over his natural son, Britannicus, marking Nero as the designated heir.
When Claudius died in AD 54, Nero became emperor just two months before turning 17.
As he was supported by both the army and the senate, his rise to power was smooth. His mother Agrippina exerted a significant influence, especially at the beginning of his rule.
The Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio all claim that Nero, fed up with Agrippina’s interference, decided to kill her.
Given the lack of eyewitnesses, there is no way of knowing if or how this happened. However, this did not stop historians from fabricating dramatic stories of Agrippina’s murder, asserting that Nero tried (and failed) to kill her with a boat engineered to sink, before sending his men to do the job.
Agrippina allegedly told them to stab her in the womb that bore Nero, her last words clearly borrowed from stage plays.
It is entirely possible, as claimed by Nero himself, that Agrippina chose (or was more likely forced) to take her own life after her plot against her son was discovered.
Early in his rule, Nero had to contend with a rebellion in the newly conquered province of Britain.
In AD 60–61, Queen Boudica of the Iceni tribe led a revolt against the Romans, attacking and laying waste to important Roman settlements. The possible causes of the rebellion were numerous – the greed of the Romans exploiting the newly conquered territories, the recalling of loans made to local leaders, ongoing conflict in Wales and, above all, violence against the family of Prasutagus, Boudica’s husband and king of the Iceni.
Boudica and the rebels destroyed Colchester, London and St Albans before being heavily defeated by Roman troops. After the uprising, the governor of Britain Suetonius Paulinus introduced harsher laws against the Britons, until Nero replaced him with the more conciliatory governor Publius Petronius Turpilianus.
The marriage between Nero and Octavia, aged 15 and 13/14 at the time, was arranged by their parents in order to further legitimise Nero’s claim to the throne. Octavia was the daughter of the emperor Claudius from a previous marriage, so when Claudius married Agrippina and adopted her son Nero, Nero and Octavia became brother and sister. In order to arrange their marriage, Octavia had to be adopted into another family.
Their marriage was not a happy one. According to ancient writers, Nero had various affairs until his lover Poppaea Sabina convinced him to divorce his wife. Octavia was first exiled then executed in AD 62 on adultery charges. According to ancient writers, her banishment and death caused great unrest among the public, who sympathised with the dutiful Octavia.
No further motives were offered for Octavia’s death other than Nero’s passion for Poppaea, and we will probably never know what transpired at court. The fact that Octavia couldn’t produce an heir while Poppaea was pregnant with Nero’s daughter likely played an important role in deciding Octavia’s fate.
On 19 July AD 64, a fire started close to the Circus Maximus. The flames soon encompassed the entire city of Rome and the fire raged for nine days. Only four of the 14 districts of the capital were spared, while three were completely destroyed.
Rome had already been razed by flames – and would be again in its long history – but this event was so severe it came to be known as the Great Fire of Rome.
Later historians blamed Nero for the event, claiming that he set the capital ablaze in order to clear land for the construction of a vast new palace. According to Suetonius and Cassius Dio, Nero took in the view of the burning city from the imperial residence while playing the lyre and singing about the fall of Troy. This story, however, is fictional.
Tacitus, the only historian who was actually alive at the time of the Great Fire of Rome (although only 8 years old), wrote that Nero was not even in Rome when the fire started, but returned to the capital and led the relief efforts.
Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio all describe Nero as being blinded by passion for his wife Poppaea, yet they accuse him of killing her, allegedly by kicking her in an outburst of rage while she was pregnant.
Interestingly, pregnant women being kicked to death by enraged husbands is a recurring theme in ancient literature, used to explore the (self) destructive tendencies of autocrats. The Greek writer Herodotus tells the story of how the Persian king Cambyses kicked his pregnant wife in the stomach, causing her death. A similar episode is told of Periander, tyrant of Corinth. Nero is just one of many allegedly ‘mad’ tyrants for which this literary convention was used.
Poppaea probably died from complications connected with her pregnancy and not at Nero’s hands. She was given a lavish funeral and was deified.
Centred on greater Iran, the Parthian empire was a major political and cultural power and a long-standing enemy of Rome. The two powers had long been contending for control over the buffer state of Armenia and open conflict sparked again during Nero’s rule. The Parthian War started in AD 58 and, after initial victories and following set-backs, ended in AD 63 when a diplomatic solution was reached between Nero and the Parthian king Vologases I.
According to this settlement Tiridates, brother of the Parthian king, would rule over Armenia, but only after having travelled all the way to Rome to be crowned by Nero.
The journey lasted 9 months, Tiridates’ retinue included 3,000 Parthian horsemen and many Roman soldiers. The coronation ceremony took place in the summer of AD 66 and the day was celebrated with much pomp: all the people of Rome saw the new king of Armenia kneeling in front of Nero. This was the Golden Day of Nero’s rule
In AD 68, Vindex, the governor of Gaul (France), rebelled against Nero and declared his support for Galba, the governor of Spain. Vindex was defeated in battle by troops loyal to Nero, yet Galba started gaining more military support.
It was at this point that Nero lost the support of Rome’s people due to a grain shortage, caused by a rebellious commander who cut the crucial food supply from Egypt to the capital. Abandoned by the people and declared an enemy of the state by the senate, Nero tried to flee Rome and eventually committed suicide.
Following his death, Nero’s memory was condemned (a practice called damnatio memoriae) and the images of the emperor were destroyed, removed or reworked. However, Nero was still given an expensive funeral and for a long time people decorated his tomb with flowers, some even believing he was still alive.
After Nero’s death, civil war ensued. At the end of the so-called ‘Year of the Four Emperors’ (AD 69), Vespasian became emperor and started a new dynasty: the Flavians.
[Francesca Bologna, curator, for British Museum]
Taken in the British Museum
The Newcastle Gaol:“It is strange, but in one custom we are more barbarous than our ancestors in bygone days. It is the toll of the Felon’s Plot.”
Prison Burial: You might think that being executed would be punishment enough for an awful crime, but as late as the twentieth century in Britain there were what was known as post-mortem punishments. The most common two punishments were public dissection (anatomisation by surgeons) and gibbetting (the criminal’s body was encaged in iron and hung from a wooden mast, most commonly placed near the site of the crime or in a very prominent location as near to it as possible). Post-Mortem punishments have a long history, but arguably the longest lasting was the denial of a Christian burial and the refusal of the authorities to hand the convicted felons’ body over to their loved ones for burial. This punishment continued long after dissection and gibbeting were removed by the Anatomy Act (1832) and Hanging in Chains Act (1834) respectively.
We know from reports of executions in Newcastle that sometimes the fear of indecent burial was more potent than that of hanging itself in the minds of prisoners. In 1829 one broadside recorded Jane Jameson’s last moments before leaving the gaol on route to the gallows at the Town Moor. It noted that she asked the attendant Minister ‘a question about her body’, but was told that ‘she was not to care about her body but about her soul.’ Jane Jameson became the last executed felon in Newcastle to suffer the additional punishment of public dissection, but her body was not buried in the gaol grounds.
Burial within the prison walls
The first person to be buried within the walls of the Prison was Mark Sherwood in 1844. Although executed on Newcastle’s Town Moor his body was taken back to the prison via a carriage and interred within the boundaries of the prison. Like Jane Jameson before him Sherwood had raised concerns about what would happen to his body after death. Reports of his execution noted that one of his last requests was that “He expressed a wish that for interment of his bodily remains within the gaol-yard, the grave might be deep, and hoped his remains would not be allowed to be disturbed. He also desired, if not contrary to any legal regulation, that the burial service might be read when he was committed to the earth. In compliance with his wish the grave was made seven feet deep, as subsequently stated but the burial service was not read.”
Sherwood’s fears of being disturbed were not without justification as up until the Anatomy Act, 1832, the only bodies officially available for dissection, without consent, were those of executed criminals. This limited supply meant that across the country there were numerous instances of body-snatchers, sometimes known as resurrectionists, operating in churchyards and cemeteries. Newcastle was no exception. This illegal practice, arguably made most famous by William Burke and William Hare in Scotland, came about to meet the demands of a medical profession starved of body supply. Just 3 years prior to Sherwood’s execution Newcastle had been gripped by a body-snatching scandal very close to the prison. In 1840 Sophia Quin had died in the house of her daughter, Rosanna Rox, in Clogger’s Entry in Sandhill, Newcastle and was due to be buried at the dissenter’s burial ground at Ballast Hills, to the East of the city. Instead of going to the burial ground the coffin bearers took the body straight to the Surgeons’ Hall and refused Rox entry. She later gained entry by contacting the Mayor and found her mother’s coffin with the lid up and clothes were torn. On further investigation, they lifted the lid of what appeared to be a large chest and found her mother’s body standing upright in warm water up to her shoulders. At which point Rox fainted. The body was eventually recovered and successfully reburied but, it caused a great scandal in the region and was even reported on in the Medical Journal, The Lancet.
Until its closure in 1925, 15 executed criminals were buried within the walls of the prison and in most cases denied a Christian burial. After an execution it was customary for the body to hang for one hour, a centuries-old tradition, and then for an inquest to take place on the body to confirm both the cause of death and identity of the condemned. The burial would take place the same day, following the inquest over the body, and in the presence of the Prison Chaplain and a few officials.
Numerous reports from executions in the period note that there were markings made with the initials of the prisoners on stones in the boundary walls, relating to the position of their grave, but little else marked their presence. Indeed, such was the disdain for the recording or memorialising of criminal bodies in any way that a Home Office Circular in 1922 demanded that even these markings were to be removed as “such records are undesirable as they perpetuate the memory of the crime, cause unnecessary pain to relatives and rouse a morbid interest in the prisoners.” One proviso of this decision was that each prison was required to make a detailed map of the location of the bodies before destroying these remaining memorials.
Despite the Home Office’s request the location of the bodies became a serious problem for the authorities on closure of the prison. In agreeing to allow Newcastle to demolish and repurpose the prison land, the Home Office stipulated that the bodies must be removed and reinterred. Numerous reports abounded that the authorities were struggling to locate the exact placing of each grave and indeed when it came to the operation to remove them a number of bodies weren’t found. Up until now the identity of these bodies has been unknown, but research seen by this project has uncovered the identity and number of the missing bodies at Newcastle Prison.
“In the darkness of the night and at an hour kept strictly secret the bodies of the murderers which lie in the precinct of Newcastle Gaol are to be taken up and reinterred in All Saints’ Cemetery.”
Removing the bodies: On the closure of the prison
On Monday 12th October, 1925 the Governor of Durham Prison along with Robert Stuart, the medical officer and prison surgeon was in attendance at the exhumation of the graves. Stuart made a detailed report of his findings that was sent on to the Home Office. In it he gave key details into how the bodies had been buried, including whether they were clothed or not and the state of decomposition. Amongst his recordings was the following extraordinary details.
· 1. Mark Sherwood – 1844 “At a depth of about 11 feet there was no trace of coffin or body”
· 2. Patrick Forbes – 1850 “At a depth of about 11 feet there was no trace of coffin or body”
· 6. William Rowe (sic) – 1890 “We found no trace of body or coffin in this grave”
· 7 Samuel G Emery – 1894 “At a depth of about 11 feet we found no trace of a body in his grave.”
So, not only were the bodies not found but also, in some cases the coffins weren’t even located. It would appear that Mark Sherwood’s fears weren’t so ill-founded. Despite only locating 11 of the 15 bodies, the remains were eventually buried in unmarked graves at All Saints Cemetery in Jesmond – such was the secrecy around their location, that it is still unknown to this day.
Reporting on the reinterment one newspaper carried a telling quote from an unnamed prison official at Newcastle Prison,
“It is strange, but in one custom we are more barbarous than our ancestors in bygone days. It is the toll of the Felon’s Plot….Prison Officials who have assisted in the last act of a murder drama will agree that it is a mournful business. The body lies in its plain shell- not naked and covered with quicklime as was the custom until quite recent years – it lies clad in the clothes worn at the trial, so that no sensation-monger may exhibit them….when the grave is filled in the ground is levelled with its extremities marked by small white stones. On the wall of the prison that is nearest to the plot will be cut the initials of the dead and the date of the execution.”
However, there is one final twist to the tale that has been uncovered in the research for this project. On September 1st, 1928 The Boston Guardian carried the following remarkable story,
“Remains of a man who had been executed were found during excavation work for an automatic telephone exchange on the site of the old Newcastle Gaol.”
This may well tally with one of the memories that was sent in to us from a member of the public, Marie McNichol. Marie McNichol’s grandfather John (Jack) Level was part of the demolition and excavation team working on the prison site. He was employed by Purdie, Lumsden & Co as a Derrick Crane operator. Marie remembers that the building work was severely delayed when a body was uncovered “wrapped in oilskins, like that of a sailor.” An investigation followed that delayed the excavation work considerably and on the 27th August the Yorkshire Post reported that the body had remained unidentified but “It is believed the remains are those of another executed man. The bones were reinterred at Jesmond on Saturday.”
Newcastle upon Tyne, or simply Newcastle is a cathedral city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It is located on the River Tyne's northern bank, opposite Gateshead to the south. It is the most populous settlement in the Tyneside conurbation and North East England.
Newcastle developed around a Roman settlement called Pons Aelius, the settlement became known as Monkchester before taking on the name of a castle built in 1080 by William the Conqueror's eldest son, Robert Curthose. It was one of the world's largest ship building and repair centres during the industrial revolution. Newcastle was part of the county of Northumberland until 1400, when it separated and formed a county of itself. In 1974, Newcastle became part of Tyne and Wear. Since 2018, the city council has been part of the North of Tyne Combined Authority.
The history of Newcastle upon Tyne dates back almost 2,000 years, during which it has been controlled by the Romans, the Angles and the Norsemen amongst others. Newcastle upon Tyne was originally known by its Roman name Pons Aelius. The name "Newcastle" has been used since the Norman conquest of England. Due to its prime location on the River Tyne, the town developed greatly during the Middle Ages and it was to play a major role in the Industrial Revolution, being granted city status in 1882. Today, the city is a major retail, commercial and cultural centre.
Roman settlement
The history of Newcastle dates from AD 122, when the Romans built the first bridge to cross the River Tyne at that point. The bridge was called Pons Aelius or 'Bridge of Aelius', Aelius being the family name of Roman Emperor Hadrian, who was responsible for the Roman wall built across northern England along the Tyne–Solway gap. Hadrian's Wall ran through present-day Newcastle, with stretches of wall and turrets visible along the West Road, and at a temple in Benwell. Traces of a milecastle were found on Westgate Road, midway between Clayton Street and Grainger Street, and it is likely that the course of the wall corresponded to present-day Westgate Road. The course of the wall can be traced eastwards to the Segedunum Roman fort at Wallsend, with the fort of Arbeia down-river at the mouth of the Tyne, on the south bank in what is now South Shields. The Tyne was then a wider, shallower river at this point and it is thought that the bridge was probably about 700 feet (210 m) long, made of wood and supported on stone piers. It is probable that it was sited near the current Swing Bridge, due to the fact that Roman artefacts were found there during the building of the latter bridge. Hadrian himself probably visited the site in 122. A shrine was set up on the completed bridge in 123 by the 6th Legion, with two altars to Neptune and Oceanus respectively. The two altars were subsequently found in the river and are on display in the Great North Museum in Newcastle.
The Romans built a stone-walled fort in 150 to protect the river crossing which was at the foot of the Tyne Gorge, and this took the name of the bridge so that the whole settlement was known as Pons Aelius. The fort was situated on a rocky outcrop overlooking the new bridge, on the site of the present Castle Keep. Pons Aelius is last mentioned in 400, in a Roman document listing all of the Roman military outposts. It is likely that nestling in the shadow of the fort would have been a small vicus, or village. Unfortunately, no buildings have been detected; only a few pieces of flagging. It is clear that there was a Roman cemetery near Clavering Place, behind the Central station, as a number of Roman coffins and sarcophagi have been unearthed there.
Despite the presence of the bridge, the settlement of Pons Aelius was not particularly important among the northern Roman settlements. The most important stations were those on the highway of Dere Street running from Eboracum (York) through Corstopitum (Corbridge) and to the lands north of the Wall. Corstopitum, being a major arsenal and supply centre, was much larger and more populous than Pons Aelius.
Anglo-Saxon development
The Angles arrived in the North-East of England in about 500 and may have landed on the Tyne. There is no evidence of an Anglo-Saxon settlement on or near the site of Pons Aelius during the Anglo-Saxon age. The bridge probably survived and there may well have been a small village at the northern end, but no evidence survives. At that time the region was dominated by two kingdoms, Bernicia, north of the Tees and ruled from Bamburgh, and Deira, south of the Tees and ruled from York. Bernicia and Deira combined to form the kingdom of Northanhymbra (Northumbria) early in the 7th century. There were three local kings who held the title of Bretwalda – 'Lord of Britain', Edwin of Deira (627–632), Oswald of Bernicia (633–641) and Oswy of Northumbria (641–658). The 7th century became known as the 'Golden Age of Northumbria', when the area was a beacon of culture and learning in Europe. The greatness of this period was based on its generally Christian culture and resulted in the Lindisfarne Gospels amongst other treasures. The Tyne valley was dotted with monasteries, with those at Monkwearmouth, Hexham and Jarrow being the most famous. Bede, who was based at Jarrow, wrote of a royal estate, known as Ad Murum, 'at the Wall', 12 miles (19 km) from the sea. It is thought that this estate may have been in what is now Newcastle. At some unknown time, the site of Newcastle came to be known as Monkchester. The reason for this title is unknown, as we are unaware of any specific monasteries at the site, and Bede made no reference to it. In 875 Halfdan Ragnarsson, the Danish Viking conqueror of York, led an army that attacked and pillaged various monasteries in the area, and it is thought that Monkchester was also pillaged at this time. Little more was heard of it until the coming of the Normans.
Norman period
After the arrival of William the Conqueror in England in 1066, the whole of England was quickly subjected to Norman rule. However, in Northumbria there was great resistance to the Normans, and in 1069 the newly appointed Norman Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Comines and 700 of his men were killed by the local population at Durham. The Northumbrians then marched on York, but William was able to suppress the uprising. That same year, a second uprising occurred when a Danish fleet landed in the Humber. The Northumbrians again attacked York and destroyed the garrison there. William was again able to suppress the uprising, but this time he took revenge. He laid waste to the whole of the Midlands and the land from York to the Tees. In 1080, William Walcher, the Norman bishop of Durham and his followers were brutally murdered at Gateshead. This time Odo, bishop of Bayeux, William's half brother, devastated the land between the Tees and the Tweed. This was known as the 'Harrying of the North'. This devastation is reflected in the Domesday Book. The destruction had such an effect that the North remained poor and backward at least until Tudor times and perhaps until the Industrial Revolution. Newcastle suffered in this respect with the rest of the North.
In 1080 William sent his eldest son, Robert Curthose, north to defend the kingdom against the Scots. After his campaign, he moved to Monkchester and began the building of a 'New Castle'. This was of the "motte-and-bailey" type of construction, a wooden tower on top of an earthen mound (motte), surrounded by a moat and wooden stockade (bailey). It was this castle that gave Newcastle its name. In 1095 the Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Mowbray, rose up against the king, William Rufus, and Rufus sent an army north to recapture the castle. From then on the castle became crown property and was an important base from which the king could control the northern barons. The Northumbrian earldom was abolished and a Sheriff of Northumberland was appointed to administer the region. In 1091 the parish church of St Nicholas was consecrated on the site of the present Anglican cathedral, close by the bailey of the new castle. The church is believed to have been a wooden building on stone footings.
Not a trace of the tower or mound of the motte and bailey castle remains now. Henry II replaced it with a rectangular stone keep, which was built between 1172 and 1177 at a cost of £1,444. A stone bailey, in the form of a triangle, replaced the previous wooden one. The great outer gateway to the castle, called 'the Black Gate', was built later, between 1247 and 1250, in the reign of Henry III. There were at that time no town walls and when attacked by the Scots, the townspeople had to crowd into the bailey for safety. It is probable that the new castle acted as a magnet for local merchants because of the safety it provided. This in turn would help to expand trade in the town. At this time wool, skins and lead were being exported, whilst alum, pepper and ginger were being imported from France and Flanders.
Middle Ages
Throughout the Middle Ages, Newcastle was England's northern fortress, the centre for assembled armies. The Border war against Scotland lasted intermittently for several centuries – possibly the longest border war ever waged. During the civil war between Stephen and Matilda, David 1st of Scotland and his son were granted Cumbria and Northumberland respectively, so that for a period from 1139 to 1157, Newcastle was effectively in Scottish hands. It is believed that during this period, King David may have built the church of St Andrew and the Benedictine nunnery in Newcastle. However, King Stephen's successor, Henry II was strong enough to take back the Earldom of Northumbria from Malcolm IV.
The Scots king William the Lion was imprisoned in Newcastle, in 1174, after being captured at the Battle of Alnwick. Edward I brought the Stone of Scone and William Wallace south through the town and Newcastle was successfully defended against the Scots three times during the 14th century.
Around 1200, stone-faced, clay-filled jetties were starting to project into the river, an indication that trade was increasing in Newcastle. As the Roman roads continued to deteriorate, sea travel was gaining in importance. By 1275 Newcastle was the sixth largest wool exporting port in England. The principal exports at this time were wool, timber, coal, millstones, dairy produce, fish, salt and hides. Much of the developing trade was with the Baltic countries and Germany. Most of the Newcastle merchants were situated near the river, below the Castle. The earliest known charter was dated 1175 in the reign of Henry II, giving the townspeople some control over their town. In 1216 King John granted Newcastle a mayor[8] and also allowed the formation of guilds (known as Mysteries). These were cartels formed within different trades, which restricted trade to guild members. There were initially twelve guilds. Coal was being exported from Newcastle by 1250, and by 1350 the burgesses received a royal licence to export coal. This licence to export coal was jealously guarded by the Newcastle burgesses, and they tried to prevent any one else on the Tyne from exporting coal except through Newcastle. The burgesses similarly tried to prevent fish from being sold anywhere else on the Tyne except Newcastle. This led to conflicts with Gateshead and South Shields.
In 1265, the town was granted permission to impose a 'Wall Tax' or Murage, to pay for the construction of a fortified wall to enclose the town and protect it from Scottish invaders. The town walls were not completed until early in the 14th century. They were two miles (3 km) long, 9 feet (2.7 m) thick and 25 feet (7.6 m) high. They had six main gates, as well as some smaller gates, and had 17 towers. The land within the walls was divided almost equally by the Lort Burn, which flowed southwards and joined the Tyne to the east of the Castle. The town began to expand north of the Castle and west of the Lort Burn with various markets being set up within the walls.
In 1400 Henry IV granted a new charter, creating a County corporate which separated the town, but not the Castle, from the county of Northumberland and recognised it as a "county of itself" with a right to have a sheriff of its own. The burgesses were now allowed to choose six aldermen who, with the mayor would be justices of the peace. The mayor and sheriff were allowed to hold borough courts in the Guildhall.
Religious houses
During the Middle Ages a number of religious houses were established within the walls: the first of these was the Benedictine nunnery of St Bartholomew founded in 1086 near the present-day Nun Street. Both David I of Scotland and Henry I of England were benefactors of the religious house. Nothing of the nunnery remains now.
The friary of Blackfriars, Newcastle (Dominican) was established in 1239. These were also known as the Preaching Friars or Shod Friars, because they wore sandals, as opposed to other orders. The friary was situated in the present-day Friars Street. In 1280 the order was granted royal permission to make a postern in the town walls to communicate with their gardens outside the walls. On 19 June 1334, Edward Balliol, claimant to be King of Scotland, did homage to King Edward III, on behalf of the kingdom of Scotland, in the church of the friary. Much of the original buildings of the friary still exist, mainly because, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries the friary of Blackfriars was rented out by the corporation to nine of the local trade guilds.
The friary of Whitefriars (Carmelite) was established in 1262. The order was originally housed on the Wall Knoll in Pandon, but in 1307 it took over the buildings of another order, which went out of existence, the Friars of the Sac. The land, which had originally been given by Robert the Bruce, was situated in the present-day Hanover Square, behind the Central station. Nothing of the friary remains now.
The friary of Austinfriars (Augustinian) was established in 1290. The friary was on the site where the Holy Jesus Hospital was built in 1682. The friary was traditionally the lodging place of English kings whenever they visited or passed through Newcastle. In 1503 Princess Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry VII of England, stayed two days at the friary on her way to join her new husband James IV of Scotland.
The friary of Greyfriars (Franciscans) was established in 1274. The friary was in the present-day area between Pilgrim Street, Grey Street, Market Street and High Chare. Nothing of the original buildings remains.
The friary of the Order of the Holy Trinity, also known as the Trinitarians, was established in 1360. The order devoted a third of its income to buying back captives of the Saracens, during the Crusades. Their house was on the Wall Knoll, in Pandon, to the east of the city, but within the walls. Wall Knoll had previously been occupied by the White Friars until they moved to new premises in 1307.
All of the above religious houses were closed in about 1540, when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries.
An important street running through Newcastle at the time was Pilgrim Street, running northwards inside the walls and leading to the Pilgrim Gate on the north wall. The street still exists today as arguably Newcastle's main shopping street.
Tudor period
The Scottish border wars continued for much of the 16th century, so that during that time, Newcastle was often threatened with invasion by the Scots, but also remained important as a border stronghold against them.
During the Reformation begun by Henry VIII in 1536, the five Newcastle friaries and the single nunnery were dissolved and the land was sold to the Corporation and to rich merchants. At this time there were fewer than 60 inmates of the religious houses in Newcastle. The convent of Blackfriars was leased to nine craft guilds to be used as their headquarters. This probably explains why it is the only one of the religious houses whose building survives to the present day. The priories at Tynemouth and Durham were also dissolved, thus ending the long-running rivalry between Newcastle and the church for control of trade on the Tyne. A little later, the property of the nunnery of St Bartholomew and of Grey Friars were bought by Robert Anderson, who had the buildings demolished to build his grand Newe House (also known as Anderson Place).
With the gradual decline of the Scottish border wars the town walls were allowed to decline as well as the castle. By 1547, about 10,000 people were living in Newcastle. At the beginning of the 16th century exports of wool from Newcastle were more than twice the value of exports of coal, but during the century coal exports continued to increase.
Under Edward VI, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, sponsored an act allowing Newcastle to annexe Gateshead as its suburb. The main reason for this was to allow the Newcastle Hostmen, who controlled the export of Tyne coal, to get their hands on the Gateshead coal mines, previously controlled by the Bishop of Durham. However, when Mary I came to power, Dudley met his downfall and the decision was reversed. The Reformation allowed private access to coal mines previously owned by Tynemouth and Durham priories and as a result coal exports increase dramatically, from 15,000 tons in 1500 to 35,000 tons in 1565, and to 400,000 tons in 1625.
The plague visited Newcastle four times during the 16th century, in 1579 when 2,000 people died, in 1589 when 1700 died, in 1595 and finally in 1597.
In 1600 Elizabeth I granted Newcastle a charter for an exclusive body of electors, the right to elect the mayor and burgesses. The charter also gave the Hostmen exclusive rights to load coal at any point on the Tyne. The Hostmen developed as an exclusive group within the Merchant Adventurers who had been incorporated by a charter in 1547.
Stuart period
In 1636 there was a serious outbreak of bubonic plague in Newcastle. There had been several previous outbreaks of the disease over the years, but this was the most serious. It is thought to have arrived from the Netherlands via ships that were trading between the Tyne and that country. It first appeared in the lower part of the town near the docks but gradually spread to all parts of the town. As the disease gained hold the authorities took measures to control it by boarding up any properties that contained infected persons, meaning that whole families were locked up together with the infected family members. Other infected persons were put in huts outside the town walls and left to die. Plague pits were dug next to the town's four churches and outside the town walls to receive the bodies in mass burials. Over the course of the outbreak 5,631 deaths were recorded out of an estimated population of 12,000, a death rate of 47%.
In 1637 Charles I tried to raise money by doubling the 'voluntary' tax on coal in return for allowing the Newcastle Hostmen to regulate production and fix prices. This caused outrage amongst the London importers and the East Anglian shippers. Both groups decided to boycott Tyne coal and as a result forced Charles to reverse his decision in 1638.
In 1640 during the Second Bishops' War, the Scots successfully invaded Newcastle. The occupying army demanded £850 per day from the Corporation to billet the Scottish troops. Trade from the Tyne ground to a halt during the occupation. The Scots left in 1641 after receiving a Parliamentary pardon and a £4,000,000 loan from the town.
In 1642 the English Civil War began. King Charles realised the value of the Tyne coal trade and therefore garrisoned Newcastle. A Royalist was appointed as governor. At that time, Newcastle and King's Lynn were the only important seaports to support the crown. In 1644 Parliament blockaded the Tyne to prevent the king from receiving revenue from the Tyne coal trade. Coal exports fell from 450,000 to 3,000 tons and London suffered a hard winter without fuel. Parliament encouraged the coal trade from the Wear to try to replace that lost from Newcastle but that was not enough to make up for the lost Tyneside tonnage.
In 1644 the Scots crossed the border. Newcastle strengthened its defences in preparation. The Scottish army, with 40,000 troops, besieged Newcastle for three months until the garrison of 1,500 surrendered. During the siege, the Scots bombarded the walls with their artillery, situated in Gateshead and Castle Leazes. The Scottish commander threatened to destroy the steeple of St Nicholas's Church by gunfire if the mayor, Sir John Marley, did not surrender the town. The mayor responded by placing Scottish prisoners that they had captured in the steeple, so saving it from destruction. The town walls were finally breached by a combination of artillery and sapping. In gratitude for this defence, Charles gave Newcastle the motto 'Fortiter Defendit Triumphans' to be added to its coat of arms. The Scottish army occupied Northumberland and Durham for two years. The coal taxes had to pay for the Scottish occupation. In 1645 Charles surrendered to the Scots and was imprisoned in Newcastle for nine months. After the Civil War the coal trade on the Tyne soon picked up and exceeded its pre-war levels.
A new Guildhall was completed on the Sandhill next to the river in 1655, replacing an earlier facility damaged by fire in 1639, and became the meeting place of Newcastle Town Council. In 1681 the Hospital of the Holy Jesus was built partly on the site of the Austin Friars. The Guildhall and Holy Jesus Hospital still exist.
Charles II tried to impose a charter on Newcastle to give the king the right to appoint the mayor, sheriff, recorder and town clerk. Charles died before the charter came into effect. In 1685, James II tried to replace Corporation members with named Catholics. However, James' mandate was suspended in 1689 after the Glorious Revolution welcoming William of Orange. In 1689, after the fall of James II, the people of Newcastle tore down his bronze equestrian statue in Sandhill and tossed it into the Tyne. The bronze was later used to make bells for All Saints Church.
In 1689 the Lort Burn was covered over. At this time it was an open sewer. The channel followed by the Lort Burn became the present day Dean Street. At that time, the centre of Newcastle was still the Sandhill area, with many merchants living along the Close or on the Side. The path of the main road through Newcastle ran from the single Tyne bridge, through Sandhill to the Side, a narrow street which climbed steeply on the north-east side of the castle hill until it reached the higher ground alongside St Nicholas' Church. As Newcastle developed, the Side became lined with buildings with projecting upper stories, so that the main street through Newcastle was a narrow, congested, steep thoroughfare.
In 1701 the Keelmen's Hospital was built in the Sandgate area of the city, using funds provided by the keelmen. The building still stands today.
Eighteenth century
In the 18th century, Newcastle was the country's largest print centre after London, Oxford and Cambridge, and the Literary and Philosophical Society of 1793, with its erudite debates and large stock of books in several languages predated the London Library by half a century.
In 1715, during the Jacobite rising in favour of the Old Pretender, an army of Jacobite supporters marched on Newcastle. Many of the Northumbrian gentry joined the rebels. The citizens prepared for its arrival by arresting Jacobite supporters and accepting 700 extra recruits into the local militia. The gates of the city were closed against the rebels. This proved enough to delay an attack until reinforcements arrived forcing the rebel army to move across to the west coast. The rebels finally surrendered at Preston.
In 1745, during a second Jacobite rising in favour of the Young Pretender, a Scottish army crossed the border led by Bonnie Prince Charlie. Once again Newcastle prepared by arresting Jacobite supporters and inducting 800 volunteers into the local militia. The town walls were strengthened, most of the gates were blocked up and some 200 cannon were deployed. 20,000 regulars were billeted on the Town Moor. These preparations were enough to force the rebel army to travel south via the west coast. They were eventually defeated at Culloden in 1746.
Newcastle's actions during the 1715 rising in resisting the rebels and declaring for George I, in contrast to the rest of the region, is the most likely source of the nickname 'Geordie', applied to people from Tyneside, or more accurately Newcastle. Another theory, however, is that the name 'Geordie' came from the inventor of the Geordie lamp, George Stephenson. It was a type of safety lamp used in mining, but was not invented until 1815. Apparently the term 'German Geordie' was in common use during the 18th century.
The city's first hospital, Newcastle Infirmary opened in 1753; it was funded by public subscription. A lying-in hospital was established in Newcastle in 1760. The city's first public hospital for mentally ill patients, Wardens Close Lunatic Hospital was opened in October 1767.
In 1771 a flood swept away much of the bridge at Newcastle. The bridge had been built in 1250 and repaired after a flood in 1339. The bridge supported various houses and three towers and an old chapel. A blue stone was placed in the middle of the bridge to mark the boundary between Newcastle and the Palatinate of Durham. A temporary wooden bridge had to be built, and this remained in use until 1781, when a new stone bridge was completed. The new bridge consisted of nine arches. In 1801, because of the pressure of traffic, the bridge had to be widened.
A permanent military presence was established in the city with the completion of Fenham Barracks in 1806. The facilities at the Castle for holding assizes, which had been condemned for their inconvenience and unhealthiness, were replaced when the Moot Hall opened in August 1812.
Victorian period
Present-day Newcastle owes much of its architecture to the work of the builder Richard Grainger, aided by architects John Dobson, Thomas Oliver, John and Benjamin Green and others. In 1834 Grainger won a competition to produce a new plan for central Newcastle. He put this plan into effect using the above architects as well as architects employed in his own office. Grainger and Oliver had already built Leazes Terrace, Leazes Crescent and Leazes Place between 1829 and 1834. Grainger and Dobson had also built the Royal Arcade at the foot of Pilgrim Street between 1830 and 1832. The most ambitious project covered 12 acres 12 acres (49,000 m2) in central Newcastle, on the site of Newe House (also called Anderson Place). Grainger built three new thoroughfares, Grey Street, Grainger Street and Clayton Street with many connecting streets, as well as the Central Exchange and the Grainger Market. John Wardle and George Walker, working in Grainger's office, designed Clayton Street, Grainger Street and most of Grey Street. Dobson designed the Grainger Market and much of the east side of Grey Street. John and Benjamin Green designed the Theatre Royal at the top of Grey Street, where Grainger placed the column of Grey's Monument as a focus for the whole scheme. Grey Street is considered to be one of the finest streets in the country, with its elegant curve. Unfortunately most of old Eldon Square was demolished in the 1960s in the name of progress. The Royal Arcade met a similar fate.
In 1849 a new bridge was built across the river at Newcastle. This was the High Level Bridge, designed by Robert Stephenson, and slightly up river from the existing bridge. The bridge was designed to carry road and rail traffic across the Tyne Gorge on two decks with rail traffic on the upper deck and road traffic on the lower. The new bridge meant that traffic could pass through Newcastle without having to negotiate the steep, narrow Side, as had been necessary for centuries. The bridge was opened by Queen Victoria, who one year later opened the new Central Station, designed by John Dobson. Trains were now able to cross the river, directly into the centre of Newcastle and carry on up to Scotland. The Army Riding School was also completed in 1849.
In 1854 a large fire started on the Gateshead quayside and an explosion caused it to spread across the river to the Newcastle quayside. A huge conflagration amongst the narrow alleys, or 'chares', destroyed the homes of 800 families as well as many business premises. The narrow alleys that had been destroyed were replaced by streets containing blocks of modern offices.
In 1863 the Town Hall in St Nicholas Square replaced the Guildhall as the meeting place of Newcastle Town Council.
In 1876 the low level bridge was replaced by a new bridge known as the Swing Bridge, so called because the bridge was able to swing horizontally on a central axis and allow ships to pass on either side. This meant that for the first time sizeable ships could pass up-river beyond Newcastle. The bridge was built and paid for by William Armstrong, a local arms manufacturer, who needed to have warships access his Elswick arms factory to fit armaments to them. The Swing Bridge's rotating mechanism is adapted from the cannon mounts developed in Armstrong's arms works. In 1882 the Elswick works began to build ships as well as to arm them. The Barrack Road drill hall was completed in 1890.
Industrialisation
In the 19th century, shipbuilding and heavy engineering were central to the city's prosperity; and the city was a powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution. Newcastle's development as a major city owed most to its central role in the production and export of coal. The phrase "taking coals to Newcastle" was first recorded in 1538; it proverbially denotes bringing a particular commodity to a place that has more than enough of it already.
Innovation in Newcastle and surrounding areas included the following:
George Stephenson developed a miner's safety lamp at the same time that Humphry Davy developed a rival design. The lamp made possible the opening up of ever deeper mines to provide the coal that powered the industrial revolution.
George and his son Robert Stephenson were hugely influential figures in the development of the early railways. George developed Blücher, a locomotive working at Killingworth colliery in 1814, whilst Robert was instrumental in the design of Rocket, a revolutionary design that was the forerunner of modern locomotives. Both men were involved in planning and building railway lines, all over this country and abroad.
Joseph Swan demonstrated a working electric light bulb about a year before Thomas Edison did the same in the USA. This led to a dispute as to who had actually invented the light bulb. Eventually the two rivals agreed to form a mutual company between them, the Edison and Swan Electric Light Company, known as Ediswan.
Charles Algernon Parsons invented the steam turbine, for marine use and for power generation. He used Turbinia, a small, turbine-powered ship, to demonstrate the speed that a steam turbine could generate. Turbinia literally ran rings around the British Fleet at a review at Spithead in 1897.
William Armstrong invented a hydraulic crane that was installed in dockyards up and down the country. He then began to design light, accurate field guns for the British army. These were a vast improvement on the existing guns that were then in use.
The following major industries developed in Newcastle or its surrounding area:
Glassmaking
A small glass industry existed in Newcastle from the mid-15th century. In 1615 restrictions were put on the use of wood for manufacturing glass. It was found that glass could be manufactured using the local coal, and so a glassmaking industry grew up on Tyneside. Huguenot glassmakers came over from France as refugees from persecution and set up glasshouses in the Skinnerburn area of Newcastle. Eventually, glass production moved to the Ouseburn area of Newcastle. In 1684 the Dagnia family, Sephardic Jewish emigrants from Altare, arrived in Newcastle from Stourbridge and established glasshouses along the Close, to manufacture high quality flint glass. The glass manufacturers used sand ballast from the boats arriving in the river as the main raw material. The glassware was then exported in collier brigs. The period from 1730 to 1785 was the highpoint of Newcastle glass manufacture, when the local glassmakers produced the 'Newcastle Light Baluster'. The glassmaking industry still exists in the west end of the city with local Artist and Glassmaker Jane Charles carrying on over four hundred years of hot glass blowing in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Locomotive manufacture
In 1823 George Stephenson and his son Robert established the world's first locomotive factory near Forth Street in Newcastle. Here they built locomotives for the Stockton and Darlington Railway and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, as well as many others. It was here that the famous locomotive Rocket was designed and manufactured in preparation for the Rainhill Trials. Apart from building locomotives for the British market, the Newcastle works also produced locomotives for Europe and America. The Forth Street works continued to build locomotives until 1960.
Shipbuilding
In 1296 a wooden, 135 ft (41 m) long galley was constructed at the mouth of the Lort Burn in Newcastle, as part of a twenty-ship order from the king. The ship cost £205, and is the earliest record of shipbuilding in Newcastle. However the rise of the Tyne as a shipbuilding area was due to the need for collier brigs for the coal export trade. These wooden sailing ships were usually built locally, establishing local expertise in building ships. As ships changed from wood to steel, and from sail to steam, the local shipbuilding industry changed to build the new ships. Although shipbuilding was carried out up and down both sides of the river, the two main areas for building ships in Newcastle were Elswick, to the west, and Walker, to the east. By 1800 Tyneside was the third largest producer of ships in Britain. Unfortunately, after the Second World War, lack of modernisation and competition from abroad gradually caused the local industry to decline and die.
Armaments
In 1847 William Armstrong established a huge factory in Elswick, west of Newcastle. This was initially used to produce hydraulic cranes but subsequently began also to produce guns for both the army and the navy. After the Swing Bridge was built in 1876 allowing ships to pass up river, warships could have their armaments fitted alongside the Elswick works. Armstrong's company took over its industrial rival, Joseph Whitworth of Manchester in 1897.
Steam turbines
Charles Algernon Parsons invented the steam turbine and, in 1889, founded his own company C. A. Parsons and Company in Heaton, Newcastle to make steam turbines. Shortly after this, he realised that steam turbines could be used to propel ships and, in 1897, he founded a second company, Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company in Wallsend. It is there that he designed and manufactured Turbinia. Parsons turbines were initially used in warships but soon came to be used in merchant and passenger vessels, including the liner Mauretania which held the blue riband for the Atlantic crossing until 1929. Parsons' company in Heaton began to make turbo-generators for power stations and supplied power stations all over the world. The Heaton works, reduced in size, remains as part of the Siemens AG industrial giant.
Pottery
In 1762 the Maling pottery was founded in Sunderland by French Huguenots, but transferred to Newcastle in 1817. A factory was built in the Ouseburn area of the city. The factory was rebuilt twice, finally occupying a 14-acre (57,000 m2) site that was claimed to be the biggest pottery in the world and which had its own railway station. The pottery pioneered use of machines in making potteries as opposed to hand production. In the 1890s the company went up-market and employed in-house designers. The period up to the Second World War was the most profitable with a constant stream of new designs being introduced. However, after the war, production gradually declined and the company closed in 1963.
Expansion of the city
Newcastle was one of the boroughs reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835: the reformed municipal borough included the parishes of Byker, Elswick, Heaton, Jesmond, Newcastle All Saints, Newcastle St Andrew, Newcastle St John, Newcastle St Nicholas, and Westgate. The urban districts of Benwell and Fenham and Walker were added in 1904. In 1935, Newcastle gained Kenton and parts of the parishes of West Brunton, East Denton, Fawdon, Longbenton. The most recent expansion in Newcastle's boundaries took place under the Local Government Act 1972 on 1 April 1974, when Newcastle became a metropolitan borough, also including the urban districts of Gosforth and Newburn, and the parishes of Brunswick, Dinnington, Hazlerigg, North Gosforth and Woolsington from the Castle Ward Rural District, and the village of Westerhope.
Meanwhile Northumberland County Council was formed under the Local Government Act 1888 and benefited from a dedicated meeting place when County Hall was completed in the Castle Garth area of Newcastle in 1910. Following the Local Government Act 1972 County Hall relocated to Morpeth in April 1981.
Twentieth century
In 1925 work began on a new high-level road bridge to span the Tyne Gorge between Newcastle and Gateshead. The capacity of the existing High-Level Bridge and Swing Bridge were being strained to the limit, and an additional bridge had been discussed for a long time. The contract was awarded to the Dorman Long Company and the bridge was finally opened by King George V in 1928. The road deck was 84 feet (26 m) above the river and was supported by a 531 feet (162 m) steel arch. The new Tyne Bridge quickly became a symbol for Newcastle and Tyneside, and remains so today.
During the Second World War, Newcastle was largely spared the horrors inflicted upon other British cities bombed during the Blitz. Although the armaments factories and shipyards along the River Tyne were targeted by the Luftwaffe, they largely escaped unscathed. Manors goods yard and railway terminal, to the east of the city centre, and the suburbs of Jesmond and Heaton suffered bombing during 1941. There were 141 deaths and 587 injuries, a relatively small figure compared to the casualties in other industrial centres of Britain.
In 1963 the city gained its own university, the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, by act of parliament. A School of Medicine and Surgery had been established in Newcastle in 1834. This eventually developed into a college of medicine attached to Durham University. A college of physical science was also founded and became Armstrong College in 1904. In 1934 the two colleges merged to become King's College, Durham. This remained as part of Durham University until the new university was created in 1963. In 1992 the city gained its second university when Newcastle Polytechnic was granted university status as Northumbria University.
Newcastle City Council moved to the new Newcastle Civic Centre in 1968.
As heavy industries declined in the second half of the 20th century, large sections of the city centre were demolished along with many areas of slum housing. The leading political figure in the city during the 1960s was T. Dan Smith who oversaw a massive building programme of highrise housing estates and authorised the demolition of a quarter of the Georgian Grainger Town to make way for Eldon Square Shopping Centre. Smith's control in Newcastle collapsed when it was exposed that he had used public contracts to advantage himself and his business associates and for a time Newcastle became a byword for civic corruption as depicted in the films Get Carter and Stormy Monday and in the television series Our Friends in the North. However, much of the historic Grainger Town area survived and was, for the most part, fully restored in the late 1990s. Northumberland Street, initially the A1, was gradually closed to traffic from the 1970s and completely pedestrianised by 1998.
In 1978 a new rapid transport system, the Metro, was built, linking the Tyneside area. The system opened in August 1980. A new bridge was built to carry the Metro across the river between Gateshead and Newcastle. This was the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, commonly known as the Metro Bridge. Eventually the Metro system was extended to reach Newcastle Airport in 1991, and in 2002 the Metro system was extended to the nearby city of Sunderland.
As the 20th century progressed, trade on the Newcastle and Gateshead quaysides gradually declined, until by the 1980s both sides of the river were looking rather derelict. Shipping company offices had closed along with offices of firms related to shipping. There were also derelict warehouses lining the riverbank. Local government produced a master plan to re-develop the Newcastle quayside and this was begun in the 1990s. New offices, restaurants, bars and residential accommodation were built and the area has changed in the space of a few years into a vibrant area, partially returning the focus of Newcastle to the riverside, where it was in medieval times.
The Gateshead Millennium Bridge, a foot and cycle bridge, 26 feet (7.9 m) wide and 413 feet (126 m) long, was completed in 2001. The road deck is in the form of a curve and is supported by a steel arch. To allow ships to pass, the whole structure, both arch and road-deck, rotates on huge bearings at either end so that the road deck is lifted. The bridge can be said to open and shut like a human eye. It is an important addition to the re-developed quayside area, providing a vital link between the Newcastle and Gateshead quaysides.
Recent developments
Today the city is a vibrant centre for office and retail employment, but just a short distance away there are impoverished inner-city housing estates, in areas originally built to provide affordable housing for employees of the shipyards and other heavy industries that lined the River Tyne. In the 2010s Newcastle City Council began implementing plans to regenerate these depressed areas, such as those along the Ouseburn Valley.
Through the last month 20 Iranian hostages executed by ruling rejim.
in the time that rejim knows better than others 99% of people hate it ,there is no other way for them to be in
power but terror ,torture,rape,executions.Actually the world is watching that the 70 million Iranians are hostaged by a rejim that every passing day proves its anti-iranian and anti -humanity manners.
Although there are more and more politicians insisting that such rejim must be controlled and managed
from other side of the Iranian borders.they believe such manners lead us to a barbaric thoughts which is deeply eager to ruling Iran completely.
Unlike Coulter, even supporters of capital punishment believe it should be done in a humane way and are aghast at hearing of this botched execution torturing the convict. Coulter’s inhumane response reminds us of why we should Never Trust Ann Coulter - at ANY Age, a new book available at www.coulterwatch.com/never.pdf.
Coulter commends executing teenagers who kill!:
“I enthusiastically embrace the death penalty [in the context of 14-year-old murderers].” – Ann Coulter, 4/10/97.
Coulter is OK with innocent people being executed if they’re guilty of other crimes:
“Sometimes people are innocent of the crime they were sentenced to death for, but perhaps not all crimes.” – Ann Coulter, 11/9/96.
Wants to kill people:
“I think that every day when I take the New York City subway. … I would like to kill all of them. I can analyze that and stop myself from killing people on a New York City street.” – Ann Coulter, 7/11/00
On the left is the original Robot Executioner. He kept trying to kill George by farting on him, so we had to get rid of him!
Commander's log, date 05.03.2735:
My execution came and went. I had been 'cuffed again, and a hood had been put over my head. I was ready to die. I figured I could at least die with the satisfactory knowledge that I hadn't given away any DDF secrets. But then I heard some screams. They were the screams of the guards, as Jim was decapitating them. He rescued me, and I was quite astounded to see him. After all, I had believed him to be dead. But he explained the situation to me. He had actually come across a DM underwater patrol in the pond. It was the DM underwater patrol's blood I had seen, not Jim's. But he had gotten caught on a rock down there, so it was a while before he surfaced. He found a lone DM soldier and killed him to get weapons. Then he gathered intel and found me. And what a relief that was! Now, Jim and I shall return to base to resume our normal activities.
Jeremy Croup, Commander of the DDF, signing out.
This is a picture of Auschwitz Birkenau. Also known as Auschwitz two. This was the camp designed as final sollution for the jews. This camp is specially designed for the extermination of the jews.
Here you see the track where thousands of people arrived. The drove to the left, the SS-ers and jewish special assigned people asked them to leave their lugage which 'would' be stored for them. After that they would be seperated, men one side, women the other. SS staff selected those capable for work. Those not capable for work were mostly executed the same day.
Den of Imagination - Your Miniature Painting Service
We are a registered studio in Torun, Poland. We have been in line of work since 2008. Our still growing staff of painters and sculptors is ready to work on any project you can imagine!
We are credible, solid and reliable. We work best with large commissions and we guarantee fast service.
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Den of Imagination - Your Miniature Painting Service
We are a registered studio in Torun, Poland. We have been in line of work since 2008. Our still growing staff of painters and sculptors is ready to work on any project you can imagine!
We are credible, solid and reliable. We work best with large commissions and we guarantee fast service.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WEBSITE: denofimagination.com/
YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/user/denofimagination
SHOP: shop.denofimagination.com/
TWITTER: Twitter.com/doiStudio
FLICKER: www.flickr.com/photos/97996892@N07/
PINTEREST: www.pinterest.com/denstudio/
INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/doiphoto/
Ridi Bazar is a small pilgrimage town at the confluence of Kali Gandaki and Riri Khola
Nearby cities: Palpa, Butwal, BAGLUNG,PAINU,GHIURA, (LEKHANATH SHARMA)
Coordinates: 27°56'9"N 83°26'19"E
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Cremation is the combustion, vaporization and oxidation of dead bodies to basic chemical compounds, such as gases, ashes and mineral fragments retaining the appearance of dry bone. Cremation may serve as a funeral or post-funeral rite that is an alternative to the interment of an intact dead body in a coffin or casket. Cremated remains, which do not constitute a health risk, may be buried or interred in memorial sites or cemeteries, or they may be retained by relatives and dispersed in various ways. Cremation is not an alternative to a funeral, but rather an alternative to burial or other forms of disposal.
In many countries, cremation is usually done in a crematorium. Some countries, such as India and Nepal, prefer different methods, such as open-air cremation.
HISTORY
ANCIENT
Cremation dates from at least 20,000 years ago in the archaeological record, with the Mungo Lady, the remains of a partly cremated body found at Lake Mungo, Australia.
Alternative death rituals emphasizing one method of disposal of a body - inhumation (burial), cremation, or exposure - have gone through periods of preference throughout history.
In the Middle East and Europe, both burial and cremation are evident in the archaeological record in the Neolithic era. Cultural groups had their own preferences and prohibitions. The ancient Egyptians developed an intricate transmigration of soul theology, which prohibited cremation, and this was adopted widely among other Semitic peoples. The Babylonians, according to Herodotus, embalmed their dead. Early Persians practiced cremation, but this became prohibited during the Zoroastrian Period. Phoenicians practiced both cremation and burial. From the Cycladic civilisation in 3000 BC until the Sub-Mycenaean era in 1200–1100 BC, Greeks practiced inhumation. Cremation appeared around the 12th century BC, constituting a new practice of burial, probably influenced by Anatolia. Until the Christian era, when inhumation again became the only burial practice, both combustion and inhumation had been practiced, depending on the era and location. Romans practiced both, with cremation generally associated with military honors.
In Europe, there are traces of cremation dating to the Early Bronze Age (c. 2000 BC) in the Pannonian Plain and along the middle Danube. The custom becomes dominant throughout Bronze Age Europe with the Urnfield culture (from c. 1300 BC). In the Iron Age, inhumation again becomes more common, but cremation persisted in the Villanovan culture and elsewhere. Homer's account of Patroclus' burial describes cremation with subsequent burial in a tumulus, similar to Urnfield burials, and qualifying as the earliest description of cremation rites. This may be an anachronism, as during Mycenaean times burial was generally preferred, and Homer may have been reflecting the more common use of cremation at the time the Iliad was written, centuries later.
Criticism of burial rites is a common form of aspersion by competing religions and cultures, including the association of cremation with fire sacrifice or human sacrifice.
Hinduism and Jainism are notable for not only allowing but prescribing cremation. Cremation in India is first attested in the Cemetery H culture (from c. 1900 BC), considered the formative stage of Vedic civilization. The Rigveda contains a reference to the emerging practice, in RV 10.15.14, where the forefathers "both cremated (agnidagdhá-) and uncremated (ánagnidagdha-)" are invoked.
Cremation remained common, but not universal, in both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. According to Cicero, in Rome, inhumation was considered the more archaic rite, while the most honoured citizens were most typically cremated - especially upper classes and members of imperial families.
Christianity frowned upon cremation, both influenced by the tenets of Judaism and as an attempt to abolish Graeco-Roman pagan rituals. By the 5th century, the practice of cremation had practically disappeared from Europe.
In early Roman Britain, cremation was usual but diminished by the 4th century. It then reappeared in the 5th and 6th centuries during the migration era, when sacrificed animals were sometimes included with the human bodies on the pyre, and the deceased were dressed in costume and with ornaments for the burning. That custom was also very widespread among the Germanic peoples of the northern continental lands from which the Anglo-Saxon migrants are supposed to have been derived, during the same period. These ashes were usually thereafter deposited in a vessel of clay or bronze in an "urn cemetery". The custom again died out with the Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons or Early English during the 7th century, when inhumation became general.
MIDDLE AGES
Throughout parts of Europe, cremation was forbidden by law, and even punishable by death if combined with Heathen rites.[6] Cremation was sometimes used by authorities as part of punishment for heretics, and this did not only include burning at the stake. For example, the body of John Wycliff was exhumed years after his death and cremated, with the ashes thrown in a river, explicitly as a posthumous punishment for his denial of the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation.
On the other hand, mass cremations were often performed out of fear of contagious diseases, such as after a battle, pestilence, or famine. Retributory cremation continued into modern times. For example, after World War II, the bodies of the 12 men convicted of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials were not returned to their families after execution, but were instead cremated, then disposed of at a secret location as a specific part of a legal process intended to deny their use as a location for any sort of memorial. In Japan, however, erection of a memorial building for many executed war criminals, who were also cremated, was allowed for their remains.
HINDUISM AND OTHER INDIAN ORIGN RELIGIONS
Religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism practice cremation. In Buddhism cremation is acceptable but not mandated. The founder, Shakyamuni Buddha was cremated. For Buddhist spiritual masters who are cremated, one of the results of cremation are the formation of Buddhist relics.
A dead adult Hindu is mourned with a cremation, while a dead child is typically buried. The rite of passage is performed in harmony with the Hindu religious view that the microcosm of all living beings is a reflection of a macrocosm of the universe. The soul (Atman, Brahman) is the essence and immortal that is released at the Antyeshti ritual, but both the body and the universe are vehicles and transitory in various schools of Hinduism. They consist of five elements - air, water, fire, earth and space. The last rite of passage returns the body to the five elements and origins. The roots of this belief are found in the Vedas, for example in the hymns of Rigveda in section 10.16, as follows:
Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body or his skin be scattered,
O all possessing Fire, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers.
When thou hast made him ready, all possessing Fire, then do thou give him over to the Fathers,
When he attains unto the life that waits him, he shall become subject to the will of gods.
The Sun receive thine eye, the Wind thy Prana (life-principle, breathe); go, as thy merit is, to earth or heaven.
Go, if it be thy lot, unto the waters; go, make thine home in plants with all thy members.
— Rigveda 10.16
The final rites, in case of untimely death of a child, is usually not cremation but a burial. This is rooted in Rig Veda's section 10.18, where the hymns mourn the death of the child, praying to deity Mrityu to "neither harm our girls nor our boys", and pleads the earth to cover, protect the deceased child as a soft wool.
SATI
The act of sati refers to a funeral ritual in which a widowed woman committed suicide on the husband's funeral pyre. While a mention of self-immolation by one of several wives of an Indian king is found in a Greek text on India, along with self-immolation by widows in Russia near Volga, tribes of Thracians in southeast Europe, and some tribes of Tonga and Fiji islands, vast majority of ancient texts do not mention this practice. Rare mentions of such cremations in aristocratic circles appear in texts dated to be before the 9th century AD, where the widow of a king had the choice to burn with him or abstain. Ancient texts of Hinduism make no mention of Sati; its early medieval era texts forbid it, while post 10th century medieval era texts partly justify it and criticize the practice. The practice of sati, grew after 1000 CE, becoming a particularly significant practice by Hindus in India during the Islamic wars of conquest in South Asia.
This practice was made illegal in 1829 during the British colonial rule of India. After gaining independence from British colonial era, India passed a series of additional laws. The Indian Sati Prevention Act from 1988 further criminalised any type of aiding, abetting, and glorifying of sati. In modern India, the last known case of Sati was in 1987, by Roop Kanwar in Rajasthan. Her action was found to be a suicide, and it led to the arrest and prosecution of people for failing to act and prevent her suicide during her husband's cremation.
BALI
Balinese Hindu dead are generally buried inside the container for a period of time, which may exceed one month or more, so that the cremation ceremony (Ngaben) can occur on an auspicious day in the Balinese-Javanese Calendar system ("Saka"). Additionally, if the departed was a court servant, member of the court or minor noble, the cremation can be postponed up to several years to coincide with the cremation of their Prince. Balinese funerals are very expensive and the body may be interred until the family can afford it or until there is a group funeral planned by the village or family when costs will be less. The purpose of burying the corpse is for the decay process to consume the fluids of the corpse, which allows for an easier, more rapid and more complete cremation.
ISLAM
Islam strictly forbids cremation. Islam has specific rites for the treatment of the body after death.
WIKIPEDIA