On this day in 1908

Winston Churchill flip-flopped between two parties through his political career. Between 1900 and 1904, and again between 1924 and 1964, he was a member of the Conservative Party. However, he was a Liberal in the interim, during which he represented one of two seats in the constituency of Dundee. The second seat was held by Labour’s Alexander Wilkie.

Churchill had been parachuted into Dundee for the 1908 by-election after he had lost his seat in Manchester North West, which he’d been obliged to contest after being awarded a seat in the Cabinet.

Vacant seat in Dundee

The Dundee seat had become vacant when then-sitting MP Edmund Robertson, also a Liberal, became the first Baron Lochee, and Churchill managed to improve on his vote share, increasing it from 31.7% at the 1906 General Election to 44% at the 1908 by-election.

The Scottish Prohibition Party, represented by Edwin Scrymgeour, polled just 4.1% of the vote, but would eventually triumph, winning Churchill’s seat at the 1922 General Election.

Churchill interrupted

On 25 June, shortly after his 1908 by-election win, Churchill visited his new constituency and addressed a public meeting. It was not without incident. The following day, the Halifax Evening Courier reported that he “was several times interrupted by suffragists. Great excitement and commotion prevailed consequent upon stewards rather roughly ejecting some half-a-dozen disturbers.”

That same day’s Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette gave further details, explaining that it had been Churchill’s first visit to the constituency since his election, and that he’d addressed two meetings. “At the first, exclusively for women, he was subjected to much interruption by suffragists, whose antics he described as pantomimic.”

Churchill opposed women’s right to vote

Certainly in his younger years, Churchill was not a supporter of giving women the right to vote. In Churchill: Walking with Destiny, Andrew Roberts writes that Churchill argued, “‘only the most undesirable class of women are eager for the right [to vote]’ and that ‘those women who discharge their duty to the state viz. marrying and giving birth to children, are adequately represented by their husbands’, therefore ‘I shall unswervingly oppose this ridiculous movement.’”

 

...and on this day in 1836

A group of boys, who had gone hiking up Arthur’s Seat in search of rabbits, discovered 17 miniature coffins, hidden behind a piece of slate. The coffins had been placed in a small, natural cave in the rock, but by whom – and why – nobody knows.

Each of the coffins was wooden, and slightly less than 10cm long. They contained small wooden figures, one per coffin, dressed in carefully cut and sewn clothes. The coffins were in three layers, with eight on each of the bottom and middle layers, and a single coffin – the 17th – on top.

Unfortunately, not all of the coffins survived. The boys apparently spent some time throwing the coffins at each other, as a result of which, several were destroyed. However, eight of the coffins still exist and are looked after by the National Museum of Scotland, which notes that “the fabric the little bodies are dressed in dates from the early 1830s, so they hadn’t lain buried for more than six years”.

Speculation as to the coffins’ origin

However, the London Times of 20 July 1836, reporting the discovery, described how “the coffins had been deposited singly, in the little cave, and at intervals of many years. In the first tier, the coffins were quite decayed, and the wrappings had moldered away. In the second tier, the effects of age had not advanced so far. And the top coffin was quite recent looking.”

There has been much speculation as to the meaning of the coffins and why they were produced. Some suggest that they could have been used in witchcraft, while others say they are talismen that were designed to protect travellers or sailors.

However, the National Museum of Scotland reports that they could in some way be related to the crimes of the infamous Edinburgh bodysnatchers, Burke and Hare. “Seventeen coffins, seventeen victims [including the executed Burke]; buried just a few years after Burke and Hare’s sensational story had hit the headlines. Could the coffins’ secret interment represent a substitute burial for the poor, friendless souls dispatched by the murderous pair?”