title: Thames Tunnel

text: The tunnel was originally designed for horse-drawn carriages, but was mainly used by pedestrians and became a tourist attraction. In 1869 it was converted into a railway tunnel for use by the East London line which, since 2010, is part of the London Overground railway network under the ownership of Transport for London.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: At the start of the 19th century, there was a pressing need for a new land connection between the north and south banks of the Thames to link the expanding docks on each side of the river. The engineer Ralph Dodd tried, but failed, to build a tunnel between Gravesend and Tilbury in 1799.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: In 1805–09 a group of Cornish miners, including Richard Trevithick, tried to dig a tunnel farther upriver between Rotherhithe and Wapping/Limehouse but failed because of the difficult conditions of the ground. The Cornish miners were used to hard rock and did not modify their methods for soft clay and quicksand. This Thames Archway project was abandoned after the initial pilot tunnel (a 'driftway') flooded twice when 1,000 feet (305 m) of a total of 1,200 feet (366 m) had been dug. It only measured 2–3 feet by 5 feet (61–91 cm by 1.5 m), and was intended as the drain for a larger tunnel for passenger use. The failure of the Thames Archway project led engineers to conclude that "an underground tunnel is impracticable".


title: Thames Tunnel

text: However, the Anglo-French engineer Marc Brunel refused to accept this conclusion. In 1814 he proposed to Emperor Alexander I of Russia a plan to build a tunnel under the river Neva in St Petersburg. This scheme was turned down (a bridge was built instead) but Brunel continued to develop ideas for new methods of tunnelling.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Brunel patented the tunnelling shield, a revolutionary advance in tunnelling technology, in January 1818. In 1823 Brunel produced a plan for a tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping, which would be dug using his new shield. Financing was soon found from private investors, including the Duke of Wellington, and a Thames Tunnel Company was formed in 1824, the project beginning in February 1825.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The first step was the construction of a large shaft on the south bank at Rotherhithe, 150 feet (46 m) back from the river bank. It was dug by assembling an iron ring 50 feet (15 m) in diameter above ground. A brick wall 40 feet (12 m) high and 3 feet (91 cm) thick was built on top of this, with a powerful steam engine surmounting it to drive the excavation's pumps. The whole apparatus was estimated to weigh 1,000 tons. The soil below the ring's sharp lower edge was removed manually by Brunel's workers. The whole shaft thus gradually sank under its own weight, slicing through the soft ground rather like an enormous pastry cutter. The shaft became stuck at one point during its sinking as the pressure of the earth around it held it firmly in position. Extra weight was required to make it continue its descent; 50,000 bricks were added as temporary weights. It was realised that the problem was caused because the shaft's sides were parallel; years later when the Wapping shaft was built, it was slightly wider at the bottom than the top. This non-cylindrical tapering design ensured it did not get stuck. By November 1825 the Rotherhithe shaft was in place and tunnelling work could begin.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The tunnelling shield, built at Henry Maudslay's Lambeth works and assembled in the Rotherhithe shaft, was the key to Brunel's construction of the Thames Tunnel. The "Illustrated London News" described how it worked:


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Each of the twelve frames of the shield weighed over seven tons. The key innovation of the tunnelling shield was its support for the unlined ground in front and around it to reduce the risk of collapses. However, many workers, including Brunel himself, soon fell ill from the poor conditions caused by filthy sewage-laden water seeping through from the river above. This sewage gave off methane gas which was ignited by the miners' oil lamps. When the resident engineer, John Armstrong, fell ill in April 1826 Marc's son Isambard Kingdom Brunel took over at the age of 20.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Work was slow, progressing at only 8–12 feet a week (3–4 m). To earn some income from the tunnel, the company directors allowed sightseers to view the shield in operation. They charged a shilling for the adventure and an estimated 600–800 visitors took advantage of the opportunity every day.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The excavation was also hazardous. The tunnel flooded suddenly on 18 May 1827 after had been dug. Isambard Kingdom Brunel lowered a diving bell from a boat to repair the hole at the bottom of the river, throwing bags filled with clay into the breach in the tunnel's roof. Following the repairs and the drainage of the tunnel, he held a banquet inside it.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The tunnel flooded again the following year, on 12 January 1828, by which six men died. Isambard was extremely lucky to survive this; the six men had made their way to the main stairwell, as the emergency exit was known to be locked. Isambard instead made for the locked exit. A contractor named Beamish heard him there and broke the door down, and an unconscious Isambard was pulled out and revived. He was sent to Brislington, near Bristol, to recuperate; there he heard about the competition to build what became the Clifton Suspension Bridge.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Financial problems followed, leading in August to the tunnel being walled off just behind the shield and then abandoned for seven years.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: In December 1834 Marc Brunel succeeded in raising enough money (including a loan of £247,000 from the Treasury) to continue construction.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Starting in August 1835 the old rusted shield was dismantled and removed. By March 1836 the new shield, improved and heavier, was assembled in place and boring resumed.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Impeded by further floods, (23 August and 3 November 1837, 20 March 1838, 3 April 1840) fires and leaks of methane and hydrogen sulphide gas, the remainder of the tunnelling was completed in November 1841, after another five and a half years. The extensive delays and repeated flooding made the tunnel the butt of metropolitan humour:


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The Thames Tunnel was fitted out with lighting, roadways and spiral staircases during 1841–1842. An engine house on the Rotherhithe side, which now houses the Brunel Museum, was also constructed to house machinery for draining the tunnel. The tunnel was finally opened to the public on 25 March 1843.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Although it was a triumph of civil engineering, the Thames Tunnel was not a financial success. It had cost £454,000 to dig and another £180,000 to fit out – far exceeding its initial cost estimates. Proposals to extend the entrance to accommodate wheeled vehicles failed owing to cost, and it was used only by pedestrians. It became a major tourist attraction, attracting about two million people a year, each paying a penny to pass through, and became the subject of popular songs. The American traveller William Allen Drew commented that "No one goes to London without visiting the Tunnel" and described it as the "eighth wonder of the world". When he saw it for himself in 1851, he pronounced himself "somewhat disappointed in it" but still left a vivid description of its interior, which was more like an underground marketplace than a transport artery:


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Other opinions of the tunnel were more negative; some regarded it as the haunt of prostitutes and "tunnel thieves" who lurked under its arches and mugged passers-by. The American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne visited it a few years after Drew, and wrote in 1855 that the tunnel:


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The tunnel was purchased in September 1865 by the East London Railway Company, a consortium of six mainline railways which sought to use the tunnel to provide a rail link for goods and passengers between Wapping (and later Liverpool Street) and the South London Line. The tunnel's generous headroom, resulting from the architects' original intention of accommodating horse-drawn carriages, also provided a sufficient loading gauge for trains.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The line's engineer was Sir John Hawkshaw who was also noted, with W. H. Barlow, for the major re-design and completion of Isambard Brunel's long-abandoned Clifton Suspension Bridge at Bristol, which was completed in 1864.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The first train ran through the tunnel on 7 December 1869. In 1884, the tunnel's disused construction shaft to the north of the river was repurposed to serve as Wapping station.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The East London Railway was later absorbed into the London Underground, where it became the East London Line. It continued to be used for goods services as late as 1962. During the Underground days, the Thames Tunnel was the oldest underground piece of the Tube's infrastructure.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: It was planned to construct an intersection between the East London Line and the Jubilee Line extension at Canada Water station. As construction would require the temporary closure of the East London Line, it was decided to take this opportunity to perform long-term maintenance on the tunnel and so in 1995 the East London Line was closed to allow construction and maintenance to take place. The proposed repair method for the tunnel was to seal it against leaks by "shotcreting" it with concrete, obliterating its original appearance, causing a controversy that led to a bitter conflict between London Underground who wished to complete the work as quickly and cheaply as possible and architectural interests wishing to preserve the tunnel's appearance. The architectural interests won with the Grade II* listing of the tunnel on 24 March 1995 (the day London Underground had scheduled the start of the long-term maintenance work).


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Following an agreement to leave a short section at one end of the tunnel untreated, and more sympathetic treatment of the rest of the tunnel, the work went ahead and the route reopened – much later than originally anticipated – in 1998. The tunnel closed again from 23 December 2007 to permit tracklaying and resignalling for the East London Line extension. The extension work resulted in the tunnel becoming part of the new London Overground. After its reopening on 27 April 2010, it was used by mainline trains again.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: The construction of the Thames Tunnel showed that it was indeed possible to build underwater tunnels, despite the previous scepticism of many engineers. Several new underwater tunnels were built in the UK in the following decades: the Tower Subway in London; the Severn Tunnel under the River Severn; and the Mersey Railway Tunnel under the River Mersey. Brunel's tunnelling shield was later refined, with James Henry Greathead playing a particularly important role in developing the technology.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: In 1991, the Thames Tunnel was designated as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Institution of Civil Engineers.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: In 1835, the Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi parodied the construction of the Thames Tunnel in lines 126–129 of the poem ""Palinodia al Marchese Gino Capponi"".


title: Thames Tunnel

text: Nearby in Rotherhithe, Brunel's engine house (built to house drainage pumps) is open to visitors as the Brunel Museum.


title: Thames Tunnel

text: In the 1860s, when trains started running through the tunnel, the entrance shaft at Rotherhithe was used for ventilation. The staircase was removed to reduce the risk of fire. In 2011, a concrete raft was built near the bottom of the shaft, above the tracks, when the tunnel was upgraded for the London Overground network. This space, with walls blackened with smoke from steam trains, forms part of the museum and functions at times as a concert venue and occasional bar. A rooftop garden has been built on top of the shaft. In 2016 the entrance hall opened as an exhibition space, with a staircase providing access to the shaft for the first time in over 150 years.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The Court of Chancery was a court of equity in England and Wales that followed a set of loose rules to avoid a slow pace of change and possible harshness (or "inequity") of the common law. The Chancery had jurisdiction over all matters of equity, including trusts, land law, the estates of lunatics and the guardianship of infants.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Its initial role was somewhat different: as an extension of the lord chancellor's role as Keeper of the King's Conscience, the court was an administrative body primarily concerned with conscientious law. Thus the Court of Chancery had a far greater remit than the common law courts, whose decisions it had the jurisdiction to overrule for much of its existence, and was far more flexible.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Until the 19th century, the Court of Chancery could apply a far wider range of remedies than common law courts, such as specific performance and injunctions, and had some power to grant damages in special circumstances. With the shift of the Exchequer of Pleas towards a common law court and loss of its equitable jurisdiction by the Administration of Justice Act 1841, the Chancery became the only national equitable body in the English legal system.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Academics estimate that the Court of Chancery formally split from and became independent of the "curia regis" in the mid-14th century, at which time it consisted of the lord chancellor and his personal staff, the Chancery. Initially an administrative body with some judicial duties, the Chancery experienced an explosive growth in its work during the 15th century, particularly under the House of York, which academics attribute to its becoming an almost entirely judicial body. From the time of Elizabeth I onwards the Court was severely criticised for its slow pace, large backlogs, and high costs. Those problems persisted until its dissolution, despite being mitigated somewhat by reforms, particularly during the 19th century.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Attempts at fusing the Chancery with the common law courts began in the 1850s, and finally succeeded with the 1873 and 1875 Supreme Court of Judicature Acts, which dissolved the Chancery and created a new unified High Court of Justice, with the Chancery Division – one of three divisions of the High Court – succeeding the Court of Chancery as an equitable body.


title: Court of Chancery

text: For much of its existence the court was formally led by the lord chancellor, assisted by the judges of the common law courts. The staff of the court included a large number of clerks, led by the master of the rolls, who regularly heard cases on his own. In 1813 a vice-chancellor was appointed to deal with the Chancery's increasing backlogs, and two more were appointed in 1841. Offices of the Chancery were sold by the lord chancellor for much of its history, raising large amounts of money. Many of the clerks and other officials were sinecures who, in lieu of wages, charged increasingly exorbitant fees to process cases, one of the main reasons why the cost of bringing a case to the Chancery was so high.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The 19th century saw the abolition of many sinecure offices and the institution of a wage and pension for the lord chancellor to curb the sale of offices, and later the right to appoint officials was transferred from the chancellor to the Crown.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The Court of Chancery originated, as did the other High Courts before 1875, in the Norman "curia regis" or King's Council, maintained by most early rulers of England after 1066. Under the feudal system, the Council was made up of the Monarch, the Great Officers of the Crown and anyone else the Monarch allowed to attend. Its jurisdiction was virtually unlimited, with executive, judicial and legislative functions. This large body contained lawyers, peers, and members of the Church, many of whom lived far from London. It soon became apparent that it was too unwieldy to deal with the nation's day-to-day business. As a result, a smaller "curia" was formed to deal with the regular business of the country, and this soon split into various courts: first the exchequer of pleas, to deal with finance, and then the Court of Common Pleas, to deal with "common" cases.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The Chancery started as the personal staff of the lord chancellor, described as "a great secretarial bureau, a home office, a foreign office, and a ministry of justice". The earliest reference to legal issues being sent to him is from 1280, when Edward I of England, annoyed with the number of cases coming to him which could have been dealt with by other elements of his administration, passed a statute saying that:


title: Court of Chancery

text: all petitions which touch the Seal shall come first to the chancellor; and those which touch the Exchequer, to the exchequer, and those which touch the justices, or the law of the land, to the justices; and those which touch the Jews, to the justices of the Jews. And if the affairs are so great, or if they are of grace, that the chancellor and the others cannot do it without the king, then they shall bring them with their own hands to the king to know his pleasure; so that no petitions shall come before the king, and his Council, but by the hands of his said chancellor, and the other chief ministers; so that the king and his Council may, without the load of other business, attend to the great business of his realm, and of other foreign countries.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Records show dozens of early cases being sent to the lord chancellor and master of the rolls, but at the time the chancellor had no specific jurisdiction to deal with them; the cases were referred to him only as a matter of convenience. Under Edward II the chancellor dedicated set days to hearing pleas, as documented in the records of the Parliament of Lincoln in 1315, which also show that some cases were heard by his personal staff, the Chancery, and not by the chancellor. By 1320 requests were regularly sent there, and heard by the judges of the common law courts, with the rules used to settle cases being those of "law or reason", sometimes simply "reason", a far more liberal and adjustable approach than the common law.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The Chancery came to prominence after the decline of the Exchequer, dealing with the law of equity, something more fluid and adaptable than the common law. The early Court of Chancery dealt with verbal contracts, matters of land law and matters of trusts, and had a very liberal view when setting aside complaints; poverty, for example, was an acceptable reason to cancel a contract or obligation. Complaints were normally brought via a bill or petition, which had to show that the common law did not provide a remedy for the problem. The Chancery writs were in French, and later English, rather than the Latin used for common law bills. In the reign of Edward III, the Court found a fixed home at Westminster Hall, where it sat almost continually until its dissolution. Before this, justice was difficult to dispose because the lord chancellor had to travel with the King wherever he went.


title: Court of Chancery

text: By 1345 the lord chancellor began to be seen as the leader of the Court of Chancery, rather than as a representative of the King, and writs and bills were addressed directly to him. Under Richard II it became practice to consider the Chancery separate from the "curia"; academic William Carne considers this a key moment in confirming the independence of the Court of Chancery. The chancellor and his clerks often heard the cases directly, rather than having them referred to the council itself; occasionally a committee of lay and church members disposed of them, assisted by the judges of the common law courts. John Baker argues that it was the late 14th century that saw Chancery procedure become fixed, citing the work done by John Waltham as master of the rolls between 1381 and 1386, and notes that this period also saw the first complaints about the Chancery.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The Chancery and its growing powers soon came to be resented by Parliament and the nobility; Carne says that it is possible to trace a general "trend of opposition" during the Plantagenet period, particularly from members of the clergy, who were more used to Roman law than equity. From the reign of Richard II, the House of Commons regularly complained about the work of the Court, and in 1390 it petitioned the king to pronounce that the Court could not act contrary to the common law, nor annul a judgement without due process. At the same time, it asked that no writ could be issued that would compel a man to appear before the Court; if it was, the clerk who issued it would lose his job and the lord chancellor would be fined £100. The king gave evasive answers to the requests, and made no decision. The Commons did succeed in making some changes to the Court's procedure, however; in 1394 the King assented to their request that victorious defendants in the Court have their costs recompensed from the other side, and in 1341 the king, on their application, allowed the lord chancellor to send cases directly to the common law courts, to avoid the common law judges having to waste time travelling. Kerly suggests that many complaints from the Commons came from lawyers of the common law, aggrieved at the Chancery's extended jurisdiction that overlapped with that of the common law. These complaints from the Commons did not prevent the Court from successfully functioning; in 1393, for example, it was considered prominent enough that the House of Lords sent two cases there to be dealt with.


title: Court of Chancery

text: According to many academics, the Court of Chancery really began to expand its caseload during the 15th century; Margaret Avery reports a massive increase in cases during the 1440s, while Nicholas Pronay suggests that the real expansion came during Yorkist rule (1461–85), when the number of cases submitted each year quadrupled. He gives complaints about the perversion of justice in the common law courts, along with growing mercantile and commercial interests, as the main reason for the growth, arguing that this was the period when the Chancery changed from being an administrative body with some judicial functions to "one of the four central courts of the realm ... the growth in the number of [cases] is a primary indicator of the changing position of Chancery". This increasing role was assisted by the changing function of the court: until the late 14th century, private parties could not bring cases to the Chancery as they could to the other courts, while by the 15th century the number of private cases had increased to the point where there were many complaints in Parliament. Marsh writes that another reason for the Chancery's growing influence was the remedies available; through orders of specific performance and injunctions, the Court could not only rectify previous wrongs but prevent future wrongs from occurring, while the common law courts were limited to awarding damages.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Chancery English, used in official documents, can be seen as the beginnings of Standard English – a national standard of spelling and grammar. By the 15th century, the City of Westminster had been the seat of government administration for about three centuries. After about 1430, the use of English in administrative documents replaced French which had been used since the Norman conquest. Consequently, the written English that developed at the Court of Chancery eventually became a standard, both in its style of handwriting ('Chancery hand') and in its grammar and vocabulary. By the 1440s and 1450s comparative regularisation of spelling had begun to emerge.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The early Elizabethan period featured a dispute between the Court of Chancery and common-law courts over who held pre-eminence. It had been the practice under Henry VI that plaintiffs in the common-law courts could not execute judgments given by the common-law judges if the lord chancellor felt their claim was "against conscience". This had been vehemently opposed by the common-law judges, who felt that if the lord chancellor had the power to override their decisions, parties to a case would flock to the Court of Chancery. The dispute over the pre-eminence of the lord chancellor continued into Elizabeth I's reign, with the judges increasing in strength; the lord chancellor was no longer a clergyman whom it was risky to offend, while the judges had grown in stature. Sir Edward Coke cites in his "Reports" a case at the end of Elizabeth I's reign which seems to indicate that the chancellor's prerogative had been overturned, when the judges (without opposition from the monarch) allowed a claim to proceed despite the lord chancellor's implied jurisdiction. At the same time, the common-law judges ruled that the Chancery had no jurisdiction over matters of freehold.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The lord chancellor of the time, Lord Ellesmere, was not dissuaded, and maintained that he had the jurisdiction to oversee decisions of the common-law courts and matters of freehold. In 1614, he heard the case of "Courtney v. Glanvil", dictating that Glanvil should be imprisoned for deceit; this was over-ruled by Sir Edward Coke in the Court of King's Bench, who demanded that Glanvil be released and issued a writ of "habeas corpus". Two years later, the "Earl of Oxford's Case" came before Ellesmere, who issued a judgment that directly contradicted English law based on the "Law of God". Coke and the other judges over-ruled this judgment while Ellesmere was ill, taking the case as an opportunity to completely overthrow the lord chancellor's jurisdiction. Ellesmere appealed to the Monarch, who referred the matter to the attorney general for the prince of Wales and Francis Bacon, the Attorney General for England and Wales. Both recommended a judgment in Ellesmere's favour, which the Monarch made, saying:


title: Court of Chancery

text: as mercy and justice be the true supports of our Royal Throne; and it properly belongeth to our princely office to take care and provide that our subjects have equal and indifferent justice ministered to them; and that when their case deserveth to be relieved in course of equity by suit in our Court of Chancery, they should not be abandoned and exposed to perish under the rigor and extremity of our laws, we ... do approve, ratifie and confirm, as well the practice of our Court of Chancery.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Coke's challenge to the Chancery is seen by academic Duncan Kerly as helping him lose his position as a judge, and until its dissolution the Court of Chancery could overrule judgments issued in the common-law courts. This was not the end of the dispute, however; in his "Institutes of the Lawes of England", Coke suggested that the Monarch's decree was unlawful, and his contemporary David Jenkins wrote in "Eight Centuries of Reports" that "the excess of Jurisdiction in Chancery, in examining Judgments at Common Law" was one of the largest abuses of the law. In the 17th century Robert Atkyns attempted to renew this controversy in his book "An Enquiry into the Jurisdiction of the Chancery in Causes of Equity", but without any tangible result. Even so, future lord chancellors were more cautious; when Francis Bacon succeeded Ellesmere, he made sure to prevent the misuse of injunctions. Horwitz writes that this was not just limited to Bacon, and that "after the dramatic confrontations between Lord Chief Justice Coke and Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, chancellors took care to circumscribe the Court's corrective jurisdiction and to focus more narrowly on territories they had staked out as peculiarly their own".


title: Court of Chancery

text: By the time of the English Civil War, the Court of Chancery was being criticised extensively for its procedure and practice. During the 16th century the Court was vastly overworked; Francis Bacon wrote of 2,000 orders being made a year, while Sir Edward Coke estimated the backlog to be around 16,000 cases. This was partly due to the incompetence of the judges, and partially due to the procedure used; evidence was re-heard up to three times and orders were issued and then over-ruled, only to be issued again: "what was ordered one day was contradicted the next, so as in some cases there had been five hundred orders and faire more as some affirmed". The Court spent a long time on each case, which, combined with the backlog, made the pursuit of a case extremely expensive. This was exacerbated by the appointment to the Court of useless, highly paid officials by the lord chancellor or master of the rolls, many of whom were their friends. The chancellor and master both openly sold these roles, whose exorbitant pay is more surprising considering that their duties were normally such that could be easily performed by solicitor's clerks, and that they were usually performed by underclerks, not by the officials.


title: Court of Chancery

text: In 1649, during the English Civil War, Parliament published a series of orders to reform the Court. Most were from the doctrines set out by Francis Bacon as lord chancellor, but there were some more modern reforms: counsels to the defendants could deliver pleas, rather than defendants in person, thus saving the cost of a Commissioner of Oaths, and cases were to be heard in the order they were accepted by the court. Parliament also fixed the fees that officers could charge, in an attempt to reduce the expense of a case. The following year, Parliament appointed a commission to look at court reform; this made many recommendations, but none that directly affected the Chancery. In August 1653 another debate took place in Parliament, lasting two days, in which a paper titled "Observations concerning the Court of Chancery" was circulated; this concerned the costs, workings, and officers of the Court. A second paper was given out, "for the regulation or taking away of the Court of Chancery, and settling the business of Equity according to the original and primitive constitution of it; and for taking away all unnecessary fees, offices and officers and formalities now used, and for the speedy dispatch of business".


title: Court of Chancery

text: Parliament eventually proposed dissolving the court as it then stood and replacing it with "some of the most able and honest men", who would be tasked with hearing equity cases. Rather than the mass of clerks on the staff, a sufficient number of "godly, able, honest and experienced clerks, which be working attorneys and clerks and not overseeing officers" would be appointed, and the Bar would elect two supervising Chief Clerks to advise on points of practice. A far-reaching and heavily criticised draft, this was eventually replaced by an even more thorough-going bill. The judges would be six Masters, who would sit in groups of three and be appointed by Parliament, assisted by a Chief Clerk. All Justices of the Peace would be allowed to submit cases to the court, with cases to be heard within 60 days. The party that lost the case was to pay full fees to the other side; the fees would be set ludicrously low. This bill was never put into effect, as Parliament was dissolved. Oliver Cromwell did appoint a Commission to institute similar provisions in 1654, but the Commission refused to perform its duties.


title: Court of Chancery

text: After the English Restoration, those judges and officials sacked under Cromwell were reinstated, with little modern progression; as Kerly puts it, "unjust judges presided again, and rank maladministration invaded the offices". The situation was much improved, nonetheless, because many of the faults were down to the machinery of the court rather than the spirit, which Lord Clarendon soon rectified. Upon appointment as lord chancellor he immediately published a new issue of the Orders for the Regulation of the Practice of the Court of Chancery. This was based on the code set by the Cromwellian Commissioners, and limited the fees charged by the court and the amount of time they could take on a case.


title: Court of Chancery

text: An effect of the Civil War and resulting Commonwealth of England, particularly the "liberal" values and feelings it stirred up, was the continuous modernisation and improvement of the common law courts, something that reduced the interference of the lord chancellor in common law matters, except in areas where they had wildly divergent principles and law. Under Charles II, for the first time, there was a type of common law appeal where the nature of the evidence in the initial trial was taken into account, which reduced the need to go to the Court of Chancery. As a result, the nature of the Court of Chancery changed; rather than being a major corrective system for the common law, it became primarily concerned with the administration and protection of rights, as opposed to the common law courts, which were mainly concerned with the remedy and retribution of problems. This was further enforced by the Statute of Frauds, which confirmed Chancery principles across the board, allowing people to receive the same treatment in the common law courts as they did in the Chancery.


title: Court of Chancery

text: A major reform to the Court happened soon after the restoration, with the introduction of a right of appeal to the House of Lords from the Chancery. Before this there had been no records of appeals to the Lords, and a committee had concluded that there was no precedent to give the Lords jurisdiction over equity matters, except when problems and cases were sent directly to Parliament (as occasionally had been the case). In 1660 the Convention Parliament claimed for itself the right of appellate jurisdiction over equity matters, and also the right of original jurisdiction to hear equity cases at first instance. After disputes which lasted into the next Parliament, this second measure was dropped, but the right to hear equity appeals was confirmed. Horowitz writes that despite these changes, one of the academic certainties is that the problems which had dogged the court for the last two centuries persisted; "Observations on the Dilatory and Expensive Proceedings in the Court of Chancery", written in 1701, listed 25 different procedures, areas and situations which contributed to the problems of high fees and slow processes.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Lord Somers, following his dismissal as lord chancellor, introduced an Act in 1706 which "became the most important act of law reform which the 18th century produced". The Act significantly amended the existing law and court procedure, and while most of it was aimed at the common-law courts, it did affect the Chancery. For equity, the Act provided that a party trying to have his case dismissed could not do so until he had paid the full costs, rather than the nominal costs that were previously required; at the same time, the reforms the Act made to common-law procedure (such as allowing claims to be brought against executors of wills) reduced the need for parties to go to equity for a remedy. Legal historian Wilfrid Prest writes that despite these legislative enactments, the tally of which "begins to look quite impressive", the old problems continued, albeit less frequently; one barrister of the time claimed that going to the Court with a case worth anything less than £500 was a waste of time.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Under Lord Hardwicke, Chancery procedure was further reformed with a pair of orders published in 1741 and 1747, which mandated that a claimant who brought his case to court and had it dismissed immediately should pay full costs to the other side, rather than the 40 shillings previously paid, and that parties filing bills of review should pay £50 for the privilege. At the same time, a review of the Court's costs and fees was undertaken by a Parliamentary Committee. The Committee reported that fees and costs had increased significantly since the last review under Charles I, a number of expensive honorary positions had been created, and on many occasions court officers had not known what the correct fees were. At the same time, proceedings had grown to several thousand pages in length, necessitating additional expense. The Committee concluded "that the interest which a great number of officers and clerks have in the proceedings of the Court of Chancery, has been a principal cause of extending bills, answers, pleadings, examinations and other forms and copies of them, to an unnecessary length, to the great delay of justice and the oppression of the subject". They recommended that a list of permissible fees be published and circulated to the court officials.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The recommendations were not immediately acted on, but in 1743 a list of permissible fees was published, and to cut down on paperwork, no party was required to obtain office copies of proceedings. The permissible fees list contained over 1,000 items, which Kerly describes as "an appalling example of the abuses which the unrestrained farming of the Offices of the Court, and the payment of all officials by fees had developed".


title: Court of Chancery

text: Despite these small reforms, the 18th century ended with continuous and unrestrained attacks on the Court. Although complaints had been common since the time of Elizabeth I, the problems had become more unrestrained, at the same time as politically neutral law reformers first arose in any great number. Many critics were barristers of the common law, ignorant of the court's workings, but some, such as Sir Samuel Romilly, had trained as a Chancery advocate and were well aware of the Chancery's procedure. The success of the Code Napoleon and the writings of Jeremy Bentham are seen by academic Duncan Kerly to have had much to do with the criticism, and the growing wealth of the country and increasing international trade meant it was crucial that there be a functioning court system for matters of equity. While the upper classes had been struggling with the Court for centuries, and regarded it as a necessary evil, the growing middle and merchant classes were more demanding. With increasing court backlogs, it was clear to many law reformers and politicians that serious reform was needed.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The first major reforms were the appointment of a vice-chancellor in 1813 to hear cases, and the extension of the Master of the Rolls' jurisdiction in 1833 to hear any and all cases. In 1824 a Chancery Commission was appointed to oversee the Court, which the political opposition maintained was simply to protect it; the membership included the lord chancellor, the master of the rolls and all senior Chancery judges. Some significant reforms were proposed; in 1829, for example, Lord Lyndhurst proposed unsuccessfully that the equity jurisdiction of the Court of Exchequer be merged with the Chancery, and that a fourth judge be appointed to hear the additional cases. A year later, when the common law courts were each gaining a judge, he repeated his proposal, but the bill was strongly opposed by judges who maintained that the court backlog did not justify the additional expense of a fourth judge. Eventually, two more vice-chancellors were appointed in 1841, and a decade later two lord justices were tasked with hearing appeals from the Court through the Court of Appeal in Chancery. These are described by Lobban as "hasty reactions to mounting arrears" rather than the result of long-term planning.


title: Court of Chancery

text: As a result of the new appointments, the court backlog was significantly reduced – the court processed 1,700 cases in 1846–49 compared to 959 in 1819–24 – but it rose again after the death of Shadwell VC and retirement of Wigram VC. Shadwell, appointed under the 1831 Act of Parliament, could be replaced, but a principal in the 1841 Act (under which Wigram had been appointed) meant that it provided for two life appointments to the court, not two open positions; after the retirement or death of the judges, no more could be appointed. Again, the backlog became a problem, particularly since the lord chancellor was distracted with the appellate cases through the Court of Appeal in Chancery and the House of Lords, leaving a maximum of three Chancery judges who were available to hear cases. Further structural reforms were proposed; Richard Bethell suggested three more vice-chancellors and "an Appellate Tribunal in Chancery formed of two of the vice chancellors taken in rotation", but this came to nothing.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The 1830s saw a reduction in the "old corruption" that had long plagued the court, first through the Chancery Sinecures Act 1832 (which abolished a number of sinecure offices within the court and provided a pension and pay rise for the lord chancellor, in the hope that it would reduce the need for the chancellor to make money by selling court offices) and then through the Chancery Regulation Act 1833. (which changed the appointments system so that masters in Chancery would henceforth be appointed by the Crown, not by the lord chancellor, and that they would be paid wages.) Through the abolition of sinecures, taking into account the wages and pension, this saved the Court £21,670 a year. The government had initially intended the 1832 bill to go further and abolish the Six Clerks, but the Clerks successfully lobbied to prevent this. This did not save them, however; in 1842 the "nettle" of the Six Clerks Office was grasped by Thomas Pemberton, who attacked them in the House of Commons for doing effectively sinecure work for high fees that massively increased the expense involved in cases. As a result, the Court of Chancery Act 1842 was passed in the same year that abolished the office of the Six Clerks completely.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Some further procedural reforms were undertaken in the 1850s. In 1850, a new set of Chancery orders were produced by the lord chancellor, allowing masters to speed up cases in whatever way they chose and allowing plaintiffs to file a claim, rather than the more expensive and long-winded bill of complaint. The Suitors in Chancery Relief Act 1852 gave all court officials salaries, abolished the need to pay them fees and made it illegal for them to receive gratuities; it also removed more sinecure positions. The Master in Chancery Abolition Act 1852 abolished the masters in Chancery, allowing all cases to be heard directly by judges instead of bounced back-and-forth between judges and masters. As a result of these reforms the court became far more efficient, and the backlog decreased; in the 1860s an average of 3,207 cases were submitted each year, while the Court heard and dismissed 3,833, many of them from the previous backlog. Much of this work was carried out by the growing number of clerks, however, and members of the legal profession became concerned about the "famine" of equity judges. Despite these reforms, it was still possible for Charles Dickens, writing in 1853 in the preface to his novel "Bleak House", to bemoan the inefficiencies of the Court of Chancery. His novel revolves around a fictional long-running Chancery case, "Jarndyce and Jarndyce". He observed that at the time he was writing there was a case before the Chancery court "which was commenced nearly twenty years ago ... and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun". He concluded that "If I wanted other authorities for Jarndyce and Jarndyce, I could rain them on these pages, to the shame of a parsimonious public".


title: Court of Chancery

text: The idea of fusing the common-law and equity courts first came to prominence in the 1850s; although the "Law Times" dismissed it as "suicide" in 1852, the idea gained mainstream credibility, and by the end of the year the "Times" was writing that there was "almost unanimity" of opinion that the existence of two separate systems was "the parent of most of the defects in the administration of our law". Much of the impetus for fusion came from pressure groups and lawyers' associations. They partially succeeded with the Common Law Procedure Act 1854 and Chancery Amendment Act 1858, which gave both courts access to the full range of remedies. Until then, the common-law courts were limited to granting damages, and the Chancery was limited to granting specific performance or injunctions. The County Courts (Equity Jurisdiction) Act 1865 gave the county courts the authority to use equitable remedies, although it was rarely used. The lord chancellors during this period were more cautious, and despite a request by the lawyers' associations to establish a royal commission to look at fusion, they refused to do so.


title: Court of Chancery

text: After the Chancery Regulation Act 1862 had gone some way toward procedural reform, in February 1867, Roundell Palmer again brought the problem of having two separate court systems to Parliament's attention, and in March 1870 Lord Hatherley introduced a bill to create a single, unified High Court of Justice. The bill was a weak one, not containing any provision addressing which court would deal with the common law and which with equity, and was also silent on the structure of the court, as Hatherley believed the difference between the common law and equity was one of procedure, not substance. As a result, the bill was heavily opposed from two sides: those who opposed fusion, and those who supported fusion but felt the provisions were too weak and vague to be of any use. As a result, the bill was eventually withdrawn.


title: Court of Chancery

text: In 1873 the idea was resurrected – again by Palmer, who was now Lord Selborne and the new lord chancellor – as the Supreme Court of Judicature bill. While still cautious, Selborne's bill was far more structured than Hatherley's, and contained more detail on what was to be done. Rather than fusing the common law and equity, which he saw as impracticable since it would destroy the idea of trusts, he decided to fuse the courts and the procedure. The final draft provided that all of the existing superior courts would be fused into one court consisting of two levels; one of first instance, one appellate. The court of first instance, to be known as the High Court of Justice, would be subdivided into several divisions based on the old superior courts, one of which, the Chancery Division, would deal with equity cases. All jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery was to be transferred to the Chancery Division; Section 25 of the Act provided that, where there was conflict between the common law and equity, the latter would prevail. An appeal from each division went to the appellate level, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. These provisions were brought into effect after amendment with the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1875, and the Court of Chancery ceased to exist. The Master of the Rolls was transferred to the new Court of Appeal, the lord chancellor retained his other judicial and political roles, and the position of vice-chancellor ceased to exist, replaced by ordinary judges. The Chancery Division remains to this day part of the High Court of Justice of England and Wales.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The idea of a trust originated during the Crusades of the 12th century, when noblemen travelled abroad to fight in the Holy Land. As they would be away for years at a time it was vital that somebody could look after their land with the authority of the original owner. As a result, the idea of joint ownership of land arose. The common law courts did not recognise such trusts, and so it fell to equity and to the Court of Chancery to deal with them, as befitting the common principle that the Chancery's jurisdiction was for matters where the common law courts could neither enforce a right nor administer it. The use of trusts and uses became common during the 16th century, although the Statute of Uses "[dealt] a severe blow to these forms of conveyancing" and made the law in this area far more complex. The court's sole jurisdiction over trusts lasted until its dissolution.


title: Court of Chancery

text: From its foundation, the Court of Chancery could administer estates, due to its jurisdiction over trusts. While the main burden in the 16th century fell on the ecclesiastical courts, their powers over administrators and executors was limited, regularly necessitating the Court of Chancery's involvement. Before the Statute of Wills, many people used feoffees to dispose of their land, something that fell under the jurisdiction of the lord chancellor anyway. In addition, in relation to the discovery and accounting of assets, the process used by the Court of Chancery was far superior to the ecclesiastical one; as a result, the Court of Chancery was regularly used by beneficiaries. The common law courts also had jurisdiction over some estates matters, but their remedies for problems were far more limited.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Initially, the Court of Chancery would not entertain a request to administer an estate as soon as a flaw in the will was discovered, rather leaving it to the ecclesiastical courts, but from 1588 onwards the Court did deal with such requests, in four situations: where it was alleged that there were insufficient assets; where it was appropriate to force a legatee to give a bond to creditors (which could not be done in the ecclesiastical courts); to secure "femme covert" assets from a husband; and where the deceased's debts had to be paid before the legacies were valid.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The Chancery's jurisdiction over "lunatics" came from two sources: first, the king's prerogative to look after them, which was exercised regularly by the lord chancellor, and second, the Lands of Lunatics Act, which gave the King (and therefore the chancellor) custodianship of lunatics and their land; the Lord chancellor exercised the first right directly and the second in his role as head of the Court of Chancery. This jurisdiction applied to any "idiots" or "lunatics", regardless of whether or not they were British, or whether their land was within England and Wales. They were divided into two categories – idiots, "who have no glimmering of reason from their birth and are, therefore, by law, presumed never likely to attain any", and lunatics, "who have had understanding but have lost the use of it". Lunatics and idiots were administered separately by the lord chancellor under his two prerogatives; the appeal under the king's prerogative went directly to the king, and under the Lands of Lunatics Act 1324 to the House of Lords.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Idiots and lunatics had their land looked after by a court-appointed administrator, and any profits went into a trust fund to support the insane person. Due to the vested interest of the king (who would hold the lands) the actual lunacy or idiocy was determined by a jury, not by an individual judge. Under the Lunacy Act 1845 the lord chancellor had a right to appoint a commission to investigate the insanity of an individual; as part of his role as Keeper of the king's conscience, however, he would only do this when it was beneficial to the lunatic, not simply because somebody had been found insane.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The law courts' jurisdiction over the guardianship of children is said to have come from the king's prerogative of "parens patriae". The Chancery had administered this area of law from an early period, since it primarily concerned the holding of land – a form of trust. Since these were mainly dealt with orally there are few early records; the first reference comes from 1582, when a curator was appointed to deal with the property of an infant. While the common law courts regularly appointed guardians, the Chancery had the right to remove them, replace them or create them in the first place. Similarly, while there were actions against guardians which the child could undertake in the common law courts, these were regularly undertaken in the Court of Chancery. This jurisdiction was first regularly recognised from 1696 onwards, and its main focus was the welfare of the child. As such, wards of the court had certain principles: their estates had to be administered under the supervision of the Court, they had to be educated under the same supervision, and any marriage had to be sanctioned by the Court.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The lord chancellor had, since the 15th century, been tasked with administering estates where the estate was to be used for charitable purposes. In "Bailiff of Burford v Lenthall", Lord Hardwicke suggested that the jurisdiction of the Court over charity matters came from its jurisdiction over trusts, as well as from the Charitable Uses Act 1601. Carne suggests that, as the Court had long been able to deal with such situations, the 1601 act was actually just the declaration of pre-existing custom. This is illustrated by the chancellor's original jurisdiction over feoffments to uses, which came from his original status as a clergyman, as charity had been originally enforced by the Church and the ecclesiastical courts. Essentially, an owner of land could dispose of it by granting the right to use it and collect fees to another, not just by selling it. This was not valid at the common law courts but was in the Court of Chancery; the lord chancellor is reported as having said, in 1492, "where there is no remedy at common law there may be good remedy in conscience, as, for example, by a feoffment upon confidence, the feoffor has no remedy by common law, and yet by conscience he has; and so, if the feoffee transfers to another who knows of this confidence, the feoffor, by means of a subpoena, will have his rights in this Court". After the reign of Edward IV, if the charitable land were to be sold (or land were to be sold to create the charity) the Court of Chancery was the only place this could be done, as ecclesiastical and probate courts did not have a valid jurisdiction.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The Court of Chancery could grant three possible remedies – specific performance, injunctions and damages. The remedy of specific performance is, in contractual matters, an order by the court which requires the party in breach of contract to perform his obligations. The validity of the contract as a whole was not normally considered, only whether there was adequate consideration and if expecting the party that breached the contract to carry out his obligations was viable. Injunctions, on the other hand, are remedies which prevent a party from doing something (unlike specific performance, which requires them to do something). Until the Common Law Procedure Act 1854, the Court of Chancery was the only body qualified to grant injunctions and specific performance.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Damages is money claimed in compensation for some failure by the other party to a case. It is commonly believed that the Court of Chancery could not grant damages until the Chancery Amendment Act 1858, which gave it that right, but in some special cases it had been able to provide damages for over 600 years. The idea of damages was first conceived in English law during the 13th century, when the Statutes of Merton and Gloucester provided for damages in certain circumstances. Despite what is normally assumed by academics, it was not just the common law courts that could grant damages under these statutes; the Exchequer of Pleas and Court of Chancery both had the right to do so. In "Cardinal Beaufort's case" in 1453, for example, it is stated that "I shall have a "subpoena" against my feoffee and recover damages for the value of the land". A statute passed during the reign of Richard II specifically gave the Chancery the right to award damages, stating:


title: Court of Chancery

text: For as much as People be compelled to come before the King's Council, or in the Chancery by Writs grounded upon untrue Suggestions; that the Chancellor for the Time being, presently after that such Suggestions be duly found and proved untrue, shall have Power to ordain and award Damages according to his Discretion, to him which is so troubled unduly, as afore is said.


title: Court of Chancery

text: This did not extend to every case, but merely to those which had been dismissed because one party's "suggestions [are] proved untrue", and was normally awarded to pay for the innocent party's costs in responding to the party that had lied. Lord Hardwicke, however, claimed that the Chancery's jurisdiction to award damages was not derived "from any authority, but from conscience", and rather than being statutory was instead due to the lord chancellor's inherent authority. As a result, General Orders were regularly issued awarding the innocent party additional costs, such as the cost of a solicitor on top of the costs of responding to the other party's false statements.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The Court became more cautious about awarding damages during the 16th and 17th centuries; lord chancellors and legal writers considered it a common law remedy, and judges would normally only award damages where no other remedy was appropriate. Damages were sometimes given as an ancillary remedy, such as in "Browne v Dom Bridges" in 1588, where the defendant had disposed of waste inside the plaintiffs woods. As well as an injunction to prevent the defendant dumping waste in the woods, damages were also awarded to pay for the harm to the woods." This convention (that damages could only be awarded as an ancillary remedy, or where no others were available) remained the cause until the 18th and early 19th centuries, when the attitude of the Court towards awarding damages became more liberal; in "Lannoy v Werry", for example, it was held that where there was sufficient evidence of harm, the Court could award damages in addition to specific performance and other remedies. This changed with "Todd v Gee" in 1810, where Lord Eldon held that "except in very special cases, it was not the course of proceeding in Equity to file a Bill for specific performance of an agreement; praying in the alternative, if it cannot be performed, an issue, or an inquiry before the Master, with a view to damages. The plaintiff must take that remedy, if he chooses it, at Law." This was followed by "Hatch v Cobb", in which Chancellor Kent held that "though equity, in very special cases, may possibly sustain a bill for damages, on a breach of contract, it is clearly not the ordinary jurisdiction of the court".


title: Court of Chancery

text: The Court's right to give damages was reiterated in "Phelps v Prothero" in 1855, where the Court of Appeal in Chancery held that if a plaintiff starts an action in a court of equity for specific performance and damages are also appropriate, the court of equity may choose to award damages. This authorisation was limited to certain circumstances, and was again not regularly used. Eventually, the Chancery Amendment Act 1858 gave the Court full jurisdiction to award damages; the situation before that was so limited that lawyers at the time commented as if the Court had not previously been able to do so.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The lord chancellor was the official head of the Court of Chancery. For much of its early existence he was closely linked with the "curia regis"; even after the Court became independent around 1345, petitions were addressed to "the king and others". By the time of Edward IV, however, petitions were issued in the name of the lord chancellor and the Court of Chancery. In the early years, the lord chancellor made most of the decisions himself; he summoned the parties, set a date for hearings, addressed questions from the parties to the case and announced the verdict. He regularly called for assistance from the common law judges, who complained that this prevented them from doing the work of the common law courts, and early records frequently say that the decision was made "with the advice and consent of the justices and servants of our Lord the King in the Chancery".


title: Court of Chancery

text: In one period, particularly under Edward III, the lord chancellor also possessed some common law jurisdiction, able to hear cases for petitions of right and the repeal of letters patent, as well as other cases in which the King was a party. He heard cases on recognizances, the execution of Acts of Parliament and any case in which an officer of the Court of Chancery was involved. Records show that he enrolled recognizances and contracts, and also issued writs commanding a sheriff to enforce them. Carne considers that this common law jurisdiction was likely down to a failure to separate the common law jurisdiction and the equity jurisdiction possessed by the lord chancellor, a failure that continued into the 16th century; Sir Edward Coke wrote that in the Chancery there was both an ordinary court and an "extraordinary" one.


title: Court of Chancery

text: Most of the early lord chancellors were members of the clergy; the first legally trained lord chancellor was Robert Parning SL, who was appointed in 1341 and held the office for two years. His successors were again clerics until the appointment of Robert Thorpe in 1371, probably due to pressure from Parliament. The precedent of appointing legally trained Lord Chancellors was not followed strongly, although others such as Nicholas Bacon did hold the office; one lord chancellor is said to have been appointed because the Queen was impressed with his skill at dancing. According to William Carne, Thomas Egerton was the first "proper" lord chancellor from the Court of Chancery's point of view, having recorded his decisions and followed the legal doctrine of precedent. Marsh writes that the use of clergymen as lord chancellors had a tremendous influence on the Court's actions, tracing the idea of following natural law in the Court back to the chancellors' Christian roots. Following the dissolution of the Court of Chancery in 1873, the lord chancellor failed to have any role in equity, although his membership of other judicial bodies allowed him some indirect control.


title: Court of Chancery

text: When the Court was a part of the "curia regis", the officers were fluid; they could include doctors of civil law, members of the "curia" and "those who ought to be summoned". As the members of the "curia" ceased to sit as Officers, however, the composition of the court became more solid. From an early period, the lord chancellor was assisted by twelve Clerks in Chancery, known as the Masters in Chancery. It was said that these positions had existed since before the Norman Conquest, sitting as part of the Witenagemot. After the conquest they gradually lost their authority, and became advisers and assistants to the lord chancellor. It was the masters who started court cases, issuing the initial writs without which parties could not begin cases in the common law courts. In addition, they took depositions and acted as secretaries to the lord chancellor, maintaining the plea rolls. In the early years they were almost always members of the clergy, called the ""clericos de prima forma""; it was not until the reign of Edward III that they were referred to as Masters in Chancery.


title: Court of Chancery

text: The twelve Masters in Chancery were led by one of their number, known as the master of the rolls. He was almost as powerful as the lord chancellor, and had wielded judicial power since the time of Edward I. He was sometimes known as the "vice-chancellor", and was given the title "The Right Worshipful". The master of the rolls assisted the Court's judges in forming judgments, and regularly sat in place of the lord chancellor. The first reference to the Master of the Rolls comes from 1286, although it is believed that the position probably existed before that; the first reference to his having independent judicial authority is from 1520. The master of the rolls had six clerks, who helped keep the records; they were independently accountable for any mistakes. These were initially solicitors for the people suing in the Court, and no other counsel was allowed, but by the time of Francis Bacon claimants were allowed their own counsel. The master of the Rolls and his clerks were housed in the Rolls Office, along with the Six Clerks' clerks, who numbered sixty. The Six Clerks were abolished in 1843, the masters in Chancery in 1852, and when the Court of Chancery was abolished, the master of the rolls moved to the newly established Court of Appeal of England and Wales.


title: Court of Chancery

text: From an early period, the Court was also assisted by two registrars, who enrolled decrees of the court and orders; their books documented the legal precedent set by the court. At the same time, two examiners were appointed to assist the master of the rolls in examining witnesses. The positions were regularly and openly sold by the master of the rolls and lord chancellor – masters in Chancery went for £6,000 in 1625. To avoid the sale of offices, and due to the corruption of many court officials, an Act was passed that year requiring that fees be paid directly into the Bank of England, and creating an Accountant-General to oversee the financial aspects of the court. In 1813 the first vice-chancellor was appointed to deal with the increasing number of cases submitted to the Court. With the backlog growing larger, two more were appointed in 1841 under a second Act of Parliament, although this provided for two life appointments, not two new positions; when the new vice-chancellors died, there could be no replacements. With the dissolution of the Court in 1873, the position of vice-chancellor ceased to exist.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: Oreal Donald Perras (August 25, 1942 – February 18, 2017) was a Canadian professional wrestler, better known by the ring name "The Russian Bear" Ivan Koloff. He was the third wrestler to hold the WWWF Championship.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: Perras was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and raised on a dairy farm in rural Ontario along with his six brothers and three sisters.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: Since first watching professional wrestling on TV at the age of eight, he wanted to become a wrestler, and would often wrestle with his brothers growing up. At age 18, he left high school and joined Jack Wentworth's wrestling school in Hamilton, Ontario, where he would lift weights and learn wrestling holds. He stood tall, and weighed approximately . Towards the end of his career, he dropped a considerable amount of weight and was tipping the scale at .


title: Ivan Koloff

text: Perras debuted as an Irish rogue villain character named Red McNulty, billed from Dublin, Ireland and wrestling with an eyepatch. For the next three years, he wrestled around the Toronto area, eventually quitting his regular job to wrestle in the north-western area of Canada. There, Perras acquired much wrestling experience, and from there he made his first trip to Japan.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: In 1967, Perras became "The Russian Bear" Ivan Koloff, a bearded villainous character billed from Ukraine, and debuted with the International Wrestling Association in Montreal, Québec. He defeated Johnny Rougeau for the IWA International Heavyweight Championship the following year. Koloff debuted in the World Wide Wrestling Federation in late 1969, managed by "Captain" Lou Albano. He soon started a rivalry with then-WWWF World Heavyweight Champion Bruno Sammartino. On January 18, 1971, Koloff defeated Sammartino in Madison Square Garden for the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship by pinfall after a knee drop from the top rope, ending Sammartino's seven and two-thirds years reign. Koloff lost the championship 21 days later to Pedro Morales, essentially being used as a "transitional champion" (as he was used to move the title from Sammartino to Morales without having the two fan favorites work against each other), much like Stan Stasiak and The Iron Sheik would be in later years. After the loss, Koloff remained a contender for the title but never reclaimed it, leaving the WWWF in 1971.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: During his time in the WWWF, Koloff weighing in at wrestled WWWF World Heavyweight Championship title matches against Sammartino, Morales, Superstar Billy Graham and Bob Backlund, holding the distinction, with fellow villain Stan Stasiak, as one of only two men to challenge all four of these champions. Koloff would also be the first opponent to ever challenge for the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship in a steel cage match in a rematch loss against Sammartino. He fought in the WWWF from 1975 to 1976, 1978–1979 and 1983. During the 1970s and 1980s, Koloff found success in the National Wrestling Alliance, winning many regional tag team and singles titles in the Georgia, Florida, and Mid-Atlantic territories. In February 1981, he teamed with Ray Stevens to defeat Paul Jones and Masked Superstar to capture the NWA World Tag Team Championship. This would be the first of his four reigns as NWA World Tag Team Champion, later winning the belts with Don Kernodle and twice with his "nephew" (kayfabe), Nikita Koloff as The Russian Team.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: The Russians (which also included Krusher Kruschev) were a top villainous group from 1984 to 1986, and Nikita, under Perras' training and mentoring, and by association, became a hated villain in his own right, and would go on to have a successful singles career of his own. After Nikita turned on Ivan to join their enemy Dusty Rhodes in 1986, the latter teamed with Vladimir Petrov and Dick Murdoch to get revenge. Koloff's biggest NWA feuds were against Rhodes, The Road Warriors, The Rock 'n' Roll Express (Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson) and Magnum T. A. In 1988, Koloff spent time in Paul Jones' faction, The Paul Jones Army, where he was a "coach" of sorts for The Powers of Pain, The Barbarian and The Warlord. He later split with Jones, reunited with Nikita, and feuded with Jones' team, The Russian Assassins, before leaving Jim Crockett Promotions in January 1989. In 1992, Koloff also wrestled in the first television main event of Jim Cornette's Smoky Mountain Wrestling, beating Bobby Fulton. He lost to Ron Garvin at Tim Horner's National Championship Wrestling on July 22, 1994. He retired afterwards.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: He also spent time in Eastern Championship Wrestling, appearing on the very first ECW card in 1992. In 1993 he began teaming with his storyline nephew Vladimir Koloff. The team won their debut match on the June 29 edition of "ECW Hardcore TV". Koloff defeated The Sandman on the July 6, 1993 episode of "ECW Hardcore TV" in a number one contenders match for the ECW Heavyweight Championship.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: In 2004, Koloff returned to the ring for the first time in 10 years. He wrestled in the independent circuit. On August 27, 2005, Koloff defeated Dominic DeNucci in a Russian chain match at WrestleReunion. Koloff would win his final wrestling title defeating The Barbarian in a Russian chain match for the Legends title at NWA Charlotte. On July 19, 2013, Koloff lost Shane Douglas in an Extreme Rules match at Mega Pro. His final match was against Bob Armstrong in which Armstrong won on November 16, 2013 at Superstars of Wrestling 1 in Rome, Georgia.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: Perras wrote a book titled "Is That Wrestling Fake? The Bear Facts" that was released on January 1, 2007. He became a born again Christian in 1995 and traveled to churches to share his testimony as an ordained minister. Koloff spoke openly and candidly of his conversion to Christianity and struggles with alcohol and drugs and the crazy days of wrestling in his 2014 book, "Life in the Trenches." Perras was named as a defendant in a 2015 lawsuit filed by WWE after they received a letter from him indicating that he intended to sue them for concussion-based injuries sustained during his tenure with them. He was represented by attorney Konstantine Kyros, who is involved in several other lawsuits involving former WWE wrestlers. The lawsuit was dismissed in September 2018.


title: Ivan Koloff

text: Koloff is featured as a playable character in the video games "Legends of Wrestling", "Legends of Wrestling II" and "".


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: A panacea , named after the Greek goddess of universal remedy Panacea, is any supposed remedy that is claimed (for example) to cure all diseases and prolong life indefinitely. It was in the past sought by alchemists in connection with the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone, a mythical substance that would enable the transmutation of common metals into gold.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: Through the 18th and 19th centuries, many "patent medicines" were claimed to be panaceas, and they became very big business.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: The term "panacea" is used in a negative way to describe the overuse of any one solution to solve many different problems, especially in medicine. The word has acquired connotations of snake oil and quackery.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: A panacea (or "panaceum") is also a literary term to represent any solution to solve all problems related to a particular issue.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: In Greek mythology, Panacea was one of the daughters of the Greek god of medicine Asclepius, along with her four sisters, each of whom performed one aspect of health care:


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: According to the mythology, Panacea had an elixir or potion with which she was able to heal any human malady, and her name has become interchangeable with the name of the cure itself.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: Ancient Greek and Roman scholars described various kinds of plants that were called "panacea" or "panaces", such as "Opopanax" sp., "Centaurea" sp., "Levisticum officinale", "Achillea millefolium" and "Echinophora tenuifolia".


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: The Cahuilla people of the Colorado Desert region of California used the red sap of the elephant tree ("Bursera microphylla") as a panacea.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: The Latin genus name of ginseng is "Panax", (or "panacea") reflecting Linnean understanding that traditional Chinese medicine used ginseng widely as a cure-all.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: In 1581 the Dutch doctor Giles Everard (also known as Gilles Everaerts) published a book "On the Panacea Herb" [De herba panacea] which implied that the newly-discovered tobacco was the long-lost ancient panacea. A work attributed to him appeared in English in 1659, entitled "Panacea; Or The Universal Medicine: Being a Discovery of the Wonderfull Vertues of Tobacco Taken in a Pipe, with Its Operation and Use Both in Physick and Chyrurgery"


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: The cure-alls became known as "patent medicines" that grew starting in the late 17th century with increasing marketing. Some found favour with royalty and were issued "letters patent" authorising the use of the royal endorsement in advertising.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: Eighteenth century England has been popularly referred to as the "golden age of physic", due to the widespread availability and consumption of enormous amounts of proprietary medicines - many of which were principally laxatives but with the added claim that they somehow purified the blood and so cured all manner of illness.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: The first such preparation that is known to use the term "panacea" for promotion was Panacea of William Swaim, starting in 1820. Defending the use of that term later, he stated that it was often used "in the restricted sense of a remedy for a large class of diseases, and not in its literal and more comprehensive meaning.” He started publishing pamphlets to promote it in 1822, and in 1824 he published a book with the title "A Treatise on Swaim’s Panacea; Being a Recent Discovery for the Cure of Scrofula or King’s Evil, Mercurial Disease, Deep-Seated Syphilis, Rheumatism, and All Disorders Arising from a Contaminated or Impure State of the Blood". The Philadelphia Medical Society took particular exception, forming a committee to tackle quack medicines which reported that The Panacea was neither effective nor safe.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: Touting these nostrums with implausible claims was one of the first major projects of the advertising industry. An early pioneer in the use of advertising to promote patent medicine was New York businessman Benjamin Brandreth, whose "Vegetable Universal Pill" eventually became one of the best-selling patent medicines in the United States. For fifty years Brandreth’s name was a household word in the United States; the Brandreth pills were a purgative that allegedly cured many ills by purging toxins out of the blood, which he claimed was the cause of all maladies. In the absence of proof, Brandreth justified this claim by quoting scripture : "The life of the flesh is in the blood." An advertisement from 1865 claimed that "By their use acute disease of every kind is cured. Perseverance will cure most chronic cases." They became so well known they received mention in Herman Melville's classic novel "Moby-Dick".


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: Similarly, James Morison was a British quack-physician who sold "Hygeian Vegetable Universal Medicine", which were advertised as "A cure for all curable ills". Morrison established his own medical school, The British College of Health, which trained agents known as Hygeists to sell the pills. However, satirists were brutal in their attacks on the business and its gullible clients, with caricatures even showing people re-growing severed limbs.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: An early nineteenth century advertisement for Daffy's Elixir said it was used for the following ailments: The Stone in Babies and Children; Convulsion fits; Consumption and Bad Digestives; Agues; Piles; Surfeits; Fits of the Mother and Vapours from the Spleen; Green Sickness; Children's Distempers, whether the Worms, Rickets, Stones, Convulsions, Gripes, King's Evil, Joint Evil or any other disorder proceeding from Wind or Crudities; Gout and Rheumatism; Stone or Gravel in the Kidnies; Cholic and Griping of the Bowels; the Phthisic; Dropsy and Scurvy.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: In 1891, Dr. John Collis Browne's Chlorodyne was advertised as a treatment for coughs, consumption, bronchitis, asthma, diphtheria, fever, croup, ague, diarrhoea, cholera, dysentery, epilepsy, hysteria, palpatation, spasms, neuralgia, rheumatism, gout, cancer, toothache, meningitis, etc.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: Even Coca-Cola was marketed as a patent medicine in its early days: it was claimed to cure many diseases, including morphine addiction, indigestion, nerve disorders, headaches, and impotence.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: The conventional medical profession pushed back against the claims of panaceas. In 1828, the New York state medical society adopted one of America's first medical ethics codes, which stated that patent medicines were not to be tolerated. From about the 1830s, one of the principal target was Morison's "Hygeian Vegetable Universal Medicine". Morison retaliated by appealing to what is now known as the logical fallacy of the "appeal to nature", criticizing the medical reliance on chemicals in contrast to his remedies made from natural vegetables.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: In contrast to their advertised safety, Morison’s pills could be dangerous, and fatal if taken in large enough quantities. In 1836, John MacKenzie, aged 32, who was diagnosed with rheumatism in the knee, died after one of Morison’s agents gave him 1,000 pills over 20 days; that agent was indicted and found guilty of manslaughter. The following year, excessive consumption of Morison’s pills was found to cause 12 deaths following investigations in York. Morison himself evaded punishment as the charges were against his agents. After Morrison dies in 1840 and his sons took over, they expanded the product range. The pills were finally withdrawn from sale in the 1920s.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: The founding of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1841 marked another step away from patent medicines and panaceas.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: In 1906, the USA passed of the first Pure Food and Drug Act. This statute did not ban the alcohol, narcotics, and stimulants in the medicines; it required them to be labelled as such, and curbed some of the more misleading, overstated, or fraudulent claims that appeared on the labels. In 1936 the statute was revised to ban them, and the United States entered a long period of ever more drastic reductions in the medications available unmediated by physicians and prescriptions. Morris Fishbein, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, who was active in the first half of the 20th century, based much of his career on exposing quacks and driving them out of business.


title: Panacea (medicine)

text: In the USA, there have been cases of products that claimed to cure many, many diseases. Seasilver, a commercial dietary supplement that was sold via multi-level marketing plan, was promoted with the false claim that it could "cure 650 diseases", resulting in the prosecution and fining of the owners.


title: Keshav Prasad Maurya

text: Keshav Prasad Maurya (born 7 May 1969) is the Deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. He is a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party.


title: Keshav Prasad Maurya

text: On 8 April 2016, on the first day of Chaitra, he was appointed the Bharatiya Janata Party chief of Uttar Pradesh. A member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, he also participated in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. Born in 1969, in Sirathu in Kausambhi district, adjoining Allahabad, Maurya went on to study Hindi Literature at the "Hindu Sahitya Sammelan" in Allahabad.


title: Keshav Prasad Maurya

text: Maurya has been associated with the RSS and the VHP-Bajrang Dal from an early age, holding the posts of Nagar Karyawah and VHP Pranth Sanghathan Mantri, among others. While being active in the "gauraksha" (cow-protection) movements. He also participated in the Ram Janmabhoomi movement. In the BJP, Maurya has been the regional (Kashi) coordinator of the backward class cell and the BJP Kisan Morcha. He has contested the 2002, 2007 and 2012 assembly elections, he lost 2002 and 2007 elections but won 2012, and was the sitting MLA from Sirathu assembly constituency before getting elected as MP from the Phulpur seat in 2014 with a thumping five lakh votes and over 52 per cent votes. In April 2016, he was made the state president of BJP in Uttar Pradesh. Under his leadership, the BJP registered a historic victory in the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly election. After the election results were out, he was considered a strong contender for the post of Chief Minister. On 18 March 2017, he was appointed the deputy chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.


title: Keshav Prasad Maurya

text: He became the first MLA of BJP from Sirathu Tahseel in the year 2012. It was the first time when any MLA of BJP was elected from Sirathu Tahseel. And after two and half-years he became the MP from Phoolpur from BJP. He got the ministries of public works department (PWD), food processing, entertainment tax and public enterprises department.


title: Night-blooming cereus

text: Night-blooming cereus is the common name referring to a large number of flowering ceroid cacti that bloom at night. The flowers are short lived, and some of these species, such as "Selenicereus grandiflorus", bloom only once a year, for a single night, though most put out multiple flowers over a period of several weeks, each of which opens for only a single night. Other names for one or more cacti with this habit are princess of the night, Honolulu queen (for "Hylocereus undatus"), Christ in the manger, dama de noche and queen of the night (which is also used for an unrelated plant species).


title: Night-blooming cereus

text: While many cacti referred to as night-blooming cereus belong to the tribe Cereeae, other night-blooming cacti in the subfamily Cactoideae may also be called night-blooming cereus. Cacti which may be called by this name include:


title: Night-blooming cereus

text: Regardless of genus or species, night-blooming cereus flowers are almost always white or very pale shades of other colors, often large, and frequently fragrant. Most of the flowers open after nightfall, and by dawn, most are in the process of wilting. Plants in the same geographical area tend to bloom on the same night. Also for healthy plants there can sometimes be as many as three separate blooming events spread out over the warmest months. The plants that bear such flowers can be tall, columnar, and sometimes extremely large and tree-like, but more frequently are thin-stemmed climbers. While some night-blooming cereus are grown indoors in homes or greenhouses in colder climates, most of these plants are too large or ungainly for this treatment, and are only found outdoors in tropical areas.


title: Night-blooming cereus

text: The dried flowers of the night-blooming cereus (霸王花) are a common ingredient used in Cantonese slow-simmered soup (traditional Chinese: 老火湯; pinyin: "lǎohuǒ tāng"; Jyutping: "lou5 fo2 tong1"). Some night-blooming cereus plants produce fruits which are large enough for people to consume. These include some of the members of the genus "Cereus", but most commonly the fruit of the "Hylocereus". "Hylocereus" fruit have the advantage of lacking exterior spines, in contrast to the fruit of cacti such as the "Selenicereus" fruit, being brightly colored, and having a pleasant taste. Since the late 1990s, "Hylocereus" fruit have been commercially grown and sold in tropical locations like Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Hawaii.


title: Sensationalism

text: In journalism and mass media, sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emotionally loaded impressions of events rather than neutrality, and may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story. Sensationalism may rely on reports about generally insignificant matters and portray them as a major influence on society, or biased presentations of newsworthy topics, in a trivial, or tabloid manner, contrary to general assumptions of professional journalistic standards.


title: Sensationalism

text: Some tactics include being deliberately obtuse, appealing to emotions, being controversial, intentionally omitting facts and information, being loud and self-centered, and acting to obtain attention. Trivial information and events are sometimes misrepresented and exaggerated as important or significant, and often include stories about the actions of individuals and small groups of people, the content of which is often insignificant and irrelevant to the macro-level day-to-day events occurring globally.


title: Sensationalism

text: In "A History of News", author Mitchell Stephens (professor of journalism and mass communication at New York University) notes sensationalism can be found in the Ancient Roman "Acta Diurna" (official notices and announcements which were presented daily on public message boards, the perceived content of which spread with enthusiasm in illiterate societies). Sensationalism was used in books of the 16th and 17th century, to teach moral lessons. According to Stevens, sensationalism brought the news to a new audience when it became aimed at the lower class, who had less of a need to accurately understand politics and the economy, to occupy them in other matters. Through sensationalism, he claims, the audience was further educated and encouraged to take more interest in the news.


title: Sensationalism

text: The more modern forms of sensationalism developed in the course of the nineteenth century in parallel with the expansion of print culture in industrialized nations. A genre of British literature, "sensation novels," became in the 1860s the best example of how the publishing industry could capitalize on a rhetoric made of surprising turns in the narrative to market serialized fiction in the expanded market of the periodical press. The London magazine "Belgravia", which was edited by the popular author of sensation novels Mary Elizabeth Braddon between 1867 and 1876, offered one of the earliest theories of modernity and its “shock value” mediated by sensationalism. The attention-grasping rhetorical techniques found in sensation fiction were also employed in articles on science, modern technology, finance, and in historical accounts of contemporary events, as discussed by Alberto Gabriele in "Reading Popular Culture in Victorian Print". The collection of essays "Sensationalism and the Genealogy of Modernity: a Global Nineteenth Century Perspective" edited by Alberto Gabriele is also helpful to track the transhistorical presence of sensationalism in several national contexts in the course of the long nineteenth century. Scholars in the collection engage in an interdisciplinary discussion on popular culture, literature, performance, art history, theory, pre-cinema and early cinema.


title: Sensationalism

text: In the late 1800s, falling costs in paper production and rising revenues in advertising in the U.S. led to a drastic rise in newspaper's circulation, which attracted the growing audiences that advertisers desired. One presumed goal of sensational reporting is to increase or sustain viewership or readership, from which media outlets can price their advertising higher to increase their profits based on higher numbers of viewers and/or readers. Sometimes this can lead to a lesser focus on objective journalism in favor of a profit motive, in which editorial choices are based upon sensational stories and presentations to increase advertising revenue. Additionally, advertisers tend to have a preference for their products or services to be reported positively in mass media, which can contribute to bias in news reporting in favor of media outlets protecting their profits and revenues, rather than reporting objectively about stated products and services.


title: Sensationalism

text: However, newspapers have a duty to report and investigate stories related to political corruption. Such investigative journalism is right and proper when it is backed up with documents, interviews with responsible witnesses, and other primary sources. Journalists and editors are often accused of sensationalizing scandals by those whose public image is harmed by the legitimate reporting of the scandal. News organizations are not obliged to (and are often ethically obliged "not" to) avoid stories that might make local, state and national public figures uncomfortable. Occasionally, news organizations mistakenly relay false information from unreliable anonymous sources, who use mass media as a tool for retaliation, defamation, victim and witness tampering, and monetary or personal gain. Therefore, any story based on sources who may be reasonably assumed to be motivated to act in this way is best interpreted with critical thinking.


title: Sensationalism

text: In extreme cases, mass media may report only information that makes a "good story" without regard for factual accuracy or social relevance. It has been argued that the distrust in government that arose in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal created a new business tactic for the media and resulted in the spread of negative, dishonest and misleading news coverage of American politics; such examples include the labeling of a large number of political scandals, regardless of their importance, with the suffix "-gate". Such stories are often perceived (rightly or wrongly) as politically partisan or biased towards or against a group or individual because of the sensational nature in which they are reported. A media piece may report on a political figure in a biased way or present one side of an issue while deriding another. It may include sensational aspects such as zealots, doomsayers and/or junk science. Complex subjects and affairs are often subject to sensationalism. Exciting and emotionally charged aspects can be drawn out without providing the elements needed (such as pertinent background, investigative, or contextual information) for the audience to form its own opinions on the subject.


title: Sensationalism

text: Sensationalism is often blamed for the infotainment style of many news programs on radio and television. According to sociologist John Thompson, the debate of sensationalism used in the mass medium of broadcasting is based on a misunderstanding of its audience, especially the television audience. Thompson explains that the term 'mass' (which is connected to broadcasting) suggests a 'vast audience of many thousands, even millions of passive individuals'. Television news is restricted to showing the scenes of crimes rather than the crime itself because of the unpredictability of events, whereas newspaper writers can always recall what they did not witness. Television news writers have room for fewer words than their newspaper counterparts. Their stories are measured in seconds, not column inches, and thus (even with footage) television stories are inherently shallower than most newspaper stories, using shorter words and familiar idioms to express ideas which a newspaper writer is more free to expand upon and define with precision.


title: Sensationalism

text: The digital revolution has completely changed the way people both create and react to news content. From a production standpoint, news outlets are now at a much higher risk of releasing content that is false because of how quickly news is circulated through the internet in order to capitalize on those views and clicks for profit. From a consumption standpoint, this means fewer people reading physical copies of newspapers and this is reflective in the way headlines are created for print media. The introduction of the term "clickbait" into the forefront of the global lexicon has had implications in many major world events, specifically the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States, which reflects the growing weakness in "controlling the limits of what it is acceptable to say". Another reason for the concern over internet sensationalism is the way certain algorithms can create "news loops" that show people the exact same thing over and over again, known as "Echo chamber". Many characters on the internet have been able to profit off of these tactics by instilling fear through completely ridiculous and unverified sources which are able to self permeate online through these algorithms. While these algorithms are meant to prioritize more trustworthy sources, this doesn't always happen since they rely on keywords and phrases. As politics have become more polarized, these tactics have become increasingly prominent as news outlets realize how easy it is to push their own agendas on the internet in this fashion. It becomes easier to break the "Overton window", and the gatekeepers, journalists at major media organizations, are losing power. Many countries have implemented response efforts to this issue, as distrust in the media has become a global concern alongside the rapidly changing format of news media.


title: Electrical cable

text: An electrical cable is an assembly of one or more wires running side by side or bundled, which is used to carry electric current.


title: Electrical cable

text: One or more electrical cables and their corresponding connectors may be formed into a "cable assembly", which is not necessarily suitable for connecting two devices but can be a partial product (e.g. to be soldered onto a printed circuit board with a connector mounted to the housing). Cable assemblies can also take the form of a cable tree or cable harness, used to connect many terminals together.


title: Electrical cable

text: The original meaning of "cable" in the electrical wiring sense was for submarine telegraph cables that were armoured with iron or steel wires. Early attempts to lay submarine cables without armouring failed because they were too easily damaged. The armouring in these early days (mid-19th century) was implemented in separate factories to the factories making the cable cores. These companies were specialists in manufacturing wire rope of the kind used for nautical cables. Hence, the finished armoured cores were also called cables. The term was later extended to any bundle of electrical conductors (or even a single conductor) enclosed in an outer sheath, whether or not it was armoured. The term is now also applied to telecommunications cables with fibre-optic cores within the outer sheath rather than copper conductors.


title: Electrical cable

text: Electrical cables are used to connect two or more devices, enabling the transfer of electrical signals or power from one device to the other. Long-distance communication takes place over undersea communication cables. Power cables are used for bulk transmission of alternating and direct current power, especially using high-voltage cable. Electrical cables are extensively used in building wiring for lighting, power and control circuits permanently installed in buildings. Since all the circuit conductors required can be installed in a cable at one time, installation labor is saved compared to certain other wiring methods.


title: Electrical cable

text: Physically, an electrical cable is an assembly consisting of one or more conductors with their own insulations and optional screens, individual covering(s), assembly protection and protective covering(s). Electrical cables may be made more flexible by stranding the wires. In this process, smaller individual wires are twisted or braided together to produce larger wires that are more flexible than solid wires of similar size. Bunching small wires before concentric stranding adds the most flexibility. Copper wires in a cable may be bare, or they may be plated with a thin layer of another metal, most often tin but sometimes gold, silver or some other material. Tin, gold, and silver are much less prone to oxidation than copper, which may lengthen wire life, and makes soldering easier. Tinning is also used to provide lubrication between strands. Tinning was used to help removal of rubber insulation. Tight lays during stranding makes the cable extensible (CBA – as in telephone handset cords).