General Introduction

Standing at the mid-point of the nineteenth century, the Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations was one of the most prominent public events of the Victorian period. The brainchild of Henry Cole, ¹ a prominent member of the Society of Arts, and the personal project of Prince Albert, ² the Prince Consort, it was an impressive and unique achievement in terms of scale. The building – Joseph Paxton’s ³ innovative glass and iron Crystal Palace – was an immense structure measuring 1,848 feet (563m) in length and 408 feet (124m) in width, and incorporating 300,000 panes of glass. It covered the space of about ten football pitches. Over 15,000 displays, divided into thirty classes (see Appendix 1, pp. xxi-ii, for the scope of each of the thirty classes of exhibits), were submitted by exhibitors recruited from Britain, from the colonies (as they were called) and from foreign states, ranging from Bavaria to Bolivia and from France to the United States. The value of the exhibits (excluding the Koh-i-noor diamond, itself valued at £2,000,000) was estimated at nearly £1,800,000, which translates in modern terms to about £150,000,000. During the 141 days when the Exhibition was open to the public, 6 million visitors passed through its turnstiles, with a staggering maximum of 109,915 on a single day. These visitors paid over £424,000 in entry charges and consumed 934,691 bath buns, while over a million bottles of non-alcoholic beverages and an unrecorded quantity of water were drunk from the several fountains inside the Crystal Palace. During the summer months of 1851 it was widely proclaimed the eighth wonder of the world.