OpenLLM-France/wikimedia huggingface dataset:
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wapentake

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​WAPENTAKE, anciently the principal administrative division of the counties of York, Lincoln, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Rutland, corresponding to the hundred in the southern counties of England. In many cases, however, ancient wapentakes are now called hundreds. North of the Tees, Sadberg in Durham is the only district which was called a wapentake, and the rest of the ancient administrative divisions of the three northern counties were called wards. The word wapentake seems to have been first applied to the periodical meetings of the magnates of a district; and, if we may believe the 12th century compilation known as the Leges Edwardi, it took its name from the custom in accordance with which they touched the spear of their newly-appointed magistrate with their own spears and so confirmed his appointment. Probably it was also usual for them to signify their approval of a proposal by the clash of their arms, as was the practice among the Scandinavian peoples. Wapentakes are not found outside the parts of England which were settled by the Danes. They varied in size in different counties; those of Yorkshire, for instance, being very much larger than those of Lincolnshire. As a general rule each wapentake had its own court, which had the same jurisdiction as the hundred courts of the southern counties. In some cases, however, a group of wapentakes had a single court. It should be noticed that the court was styled wapentagium simply, and not curia wapentagii.
See Sir Henry Ellis, General Introduction to Domesday Book; W. W. Skeat, Etymological English Dictionary; W. Stubbs, Constitutional History; and H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (1905).  (G. J. T.)
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wandsworth

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​WANDSWORTH, a south-western metropolitan borough of London, England, bounded N. by the river Thames and Battersea, and E. by Lambeth, and extending S. and W. to the boundary of the county of London. Pop. (1901) 232,034. The name, which occurs in Domesday, indicates the position of the village on the river Wandle, a small tributary of the Thames. Wandsworth is the largest in area of the metropolitan boroughs, including the districts of Putney by the river, part of Clapham in the north-east, Streatham in the south-east, Balham and Upper and Lower Tooting in the centre and south. These are mainly residential districts, and the borough is not thickly populated. Towards the west, along the Upper Richmond and Kingston roads, there is considerable open country, undulating and well wooded. It is to a great extent preserved in the public grounds of Putney Heath, which adjoins Wimbledon Common, outside the borough, on the north; and Richmond Park and Barnes Common, parts of which are in the borough. Other public grounds are parts of Wandsworth Common (193 acres) and Clapham Common, both extending into Battersea, Tooting Bec (147 acres) and Streatham Common (66 acres), and Wandsworth Park bordering the Thames. The borough is connected with Fulham across the Thames by Wandsworth and Putney bridges. The annual Oxford and Cambridge boat-race starts from above Putney Bridge, finishing at Mortlake; and the club-houses of the principal rowing clubs of London are situated on the Putney shore. Putney Heath was formerly notorious as a resort of highwaymen and duellists. Among the institutions of Wandsworth are the Royal Hospital for Incurables, Putney; the Fountain and the Grove fever hospitals, Lower Tooting; the Clapham School of Art, Wandsworth Technical Institute; the Roman Catholic Training College for Women, West Hill; and Wandsworth Prison, Heathfield Road. The parliamentary borough of Wandsworth returns one member, but the municipal borough also includes part of the Clapham division of the parliamentary borough of Battersea and Clapham, and part of the Wimbledon division of Surrey. The borough council consists of a mayor, 10 aldermen and 60 councillors. Area, 9129.7 acres.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wapenshaw

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​WAPENSHAW (M.E. for “weapon-show”), a periodical muster or review of troops formerly held in every district in Scotland, the object having been to satisfy the military chiefs that the arms of their retainers were in good condition. Scott's Old Mortality gives a description of one. The name is still given to rifle meetings held annually at Aberdeen and other places in Scotland.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wangara

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​WANGARA, the Hausa name for the Mandingo (q.v.), a people of West Africa; used also as the name of districts in the western and central Sudan. The Wangara are also known as Wangarawa, Wongara, Ungara, Wankoré and Wakore. According to Idrisi (writing in the 12th century), the Wangara country was renowned for the quantity and the quality of the gold which it produces. The country formed an island about 300 m. long by 150 in breadth, which the Nile (i.e. Niger) surrounded on all sides and at all seasons. This description corresponds fairly accurately with the tract of country between the Niger and its tributary the Bani. Idrisi's account of the annual inundation of the land by the rising of the Niger agrees with the facts. He states that on the fall of the waters natives from all parts of the Sudan assembled to gather the gold which the subsiding waters left behind. In the closing years of the 18th and the opening years of the 19th century the discoveries of Hornemann, Mungo Park and others revived the stories of Wangara and its richness in gold. Geographers of that period (e.g. Major Rennell) shifted the Wangara country far to the east and confused Idrisi's description with accounts which probably referred to Lake Chad. Gradually, however, as knowledge increased, the Wangara territory was again moved westward, and was located within the Niger bend. The name has now practically disappeared from the maps save that a town in the hinterland of Dahomey is named Wangara (French spelling Ouangara). Idrisi's account as to the richness in gold of the upper Niger regions has basis in fact; though the gold brought ​in considerable quantities to the European trading stations on the Gambia and Senegal in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries appears to have come largely from Bambuk.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wanstead

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​WANSTEAD, an urban district in the Romford parliamentary division of Essex, England, forming a residential suburb of London, on a branch of the Great Eastern railway, 8 m. N.E. of Liverpool Street station. Pop. (1901) 9179. Wanstead Park, 184 acres in extent, was opened in 1882. Northward extend the broken fragments of Epping Forest. Wanstead Flats, adjoining the Park, form another open ground. At Lake House Thomas Hood wrote the novel Tylney Hall. At Snaresbrook in the parish of Wanstead are the Infant Orphan Asylum, founded in 1827, and the Royal Merchant Seamen's Orphan Asylum, established in London in 1817 and refounded here in 1861. In Snaresbrook is Eagle Pond or Lake, 10½ acres in extent.
Wanstead is mentioned in Domesday, and the name is considered by some to be derived from Woden's stead or place, indicating a spot dedicated to the worship of Woden. It belonged before the time of Edward the Confessor to the monks of St Peter's, Westminster, acid afterwards to the bishop of London, of whom it was held at the time of the Domesday Survey by Ralph Fitz Brien. In the reign of Henry VIII. it came into the possession of the crown, and in 1549 it was bestowed by Edward VI. on Lord Rich, whose son sold it in 1577 to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester. The original manor house was rebuilt by Lord Chancellor Rich, who was here visited by Queen Elizabeth in 1561, and for her entertainment Sir Philip Sidney wrote a dramatic interlude which was played before the queen at Wanstead garden, and is printed at the end of the Arcadia. Sir Richard Child, afterwards earl of Tylney, built the splendid mansion of Wanstead House in 1715 (demolished in 1822), in which the prince of Condé and others of the Bourbon family resided during the reign of the first Napoleon.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wanganui

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​WANGANUI, the principal port on the west coast of North Island, New Zealand, in the Waitotara county, at the mouth of the Wanganui river, 134 m. by rail N. of Wellington. Pop. (1906) 8175. The town is laid out in rectangular blocks at the foot of low hills, from the summit of which (as in Queen's Gardens) a splendid panorama is seen, including the snow-clad Mount Ruapehu to the north-east. The river bar obstructs navigation, the depth not exceeding 14 ft., so that large vessels must lie outside. The district is agricultural and pastoral, and wool and grain are exported, as well as meat and dairy produce, for which there are large refrigerating works. The Wanganui Collegiate School (Church of England) is one of the largest boarding schools in Australasia. The district was the scene of conflicts with the natives in 1847, 1864 and 1868, and in the beautiful Moutoa gardens a monument commemorates the battle of that name (May 14th, 1864). The settlement was founded in 1842.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wangaratta

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​WANGARATTA, a town of Victoria, Australia, in the counties of Moira, Delatite and Bogong, at the junction of the Ovens and King rivers, 145½ m. by rail N.E. of Melbourne. Pop. (1901) 2621. It is a prosperous little town in an agricultural district and is the see of an Anglican bishop. It has numerous industries, including flour-milling, tanning, fellmongery, brewing, coach-building, bacon-curing, and bicycle and butter making. Important stock sales are held fortnightly, and there is an annual agricultural exhibition.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peach, Charles William

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​PEACH, CHARLES WILLIAM (1800–1886), British naturalist and geologist, was born on the 30th of September 1800 at Wansford in Northamptonshire; his father at the time was a saddler and harness-maker, and afterwards became an innkeeper farming about 80 acres of land. He received an elementary education at Wansford and at Folkingham in Lincolnshire; and assisted for several years in the inn and farm. In 1824 he was appointed riding officer in the Revenue Coast-guard at Weybourn in Norfolk. Sea-weeds and other marine organisms now attracted his attention, and these he zealously collected. His duties during the next few years led him to remove successively to Sheringham, Hasboro (Happisburgh), Cromer and Cley, all in Norfolk. In the course of his rambles he met the Rev. James Layton, curate at Catfield, who lent him books and assisted in laying the foundations of accurate knowledge About the year 1830 he was transferred to Charmouth in Dorset, thence to Beer, and Paignton in Devon, and to Gorran Haven near Mevagissey in Cornwall. Here he continued to pursue his zoological studies ​and supplied many specimens to G. Johnston, who was then preparing his History of the British Zoophytes (1838). It was here too that he first found fossils in some of the older rocks previously regarded as unfossiliferous—the discovery of which proved the presence of Bala Beds (Ordovician or Lower Silurian) in the neighbourhood of Gorran Haven. In 1841 he read a paper before the British Association at Plymouth “On the Fossil Organic Remains found on the south-east coast of Cornwall,” and in 1843 he brought before the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall an account of his discovery of fish remains in the Devonian slates near Polperro. Peach was transferred for a time to Fowey, and in 1849 to Scotland, first to Peterhead and then to Wick (1853), where he made acquaintance with Robert Dick of Thurso. He collected the old red Sandstone fishes; and during a sojourn at Durness he first found fossils in the Cambrian limestone (1854). Peach retired from the government service in 1861, and died at Edinburgh on the 28th of February 1886.
Biographical notice, with portrait, in S. Smiles’s Robert Dick, Baker, of Thurso, Geologist and Botanist (1878).
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peacock, Sir Barnes

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​PEACOCK, SIR BARNES (1810–1890), English judge, was born in 1810, the son of Lewis Peacock, a solicitor. After practising as a special pleader, he was called to the bar in 1836, and in 1844 obtained great reputation by pointing out the flaw which invalidated the conviction of Daniel O’Connell and his fellow defendants. In 1852 he went to India as legal member of the governor-general’s council. He here displayed great activity as a law reformer, but sometimes manifested too little consideration for native susceptibilities The legislative council was established soon after his arrival, and although no orator, he was so frequent a speaker that legislation enjoining councillors to deliver their speeches sitting was said to have been devised with the sole object of restraining him. As a member of Lord Dalhousie’s council he supported the annexation of Oudh, and he stood by Lord Canning all through the Mutiny. In 1859 he became chief justice of the Supreme Court. He returned to England in 1870, and in 1872 was placed upon the judicial committee of the privy council, where his Indian experience rendered him invaluable. He died on the 3rd of December 1890.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peak, The

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​PEAK, THE, a high table-land in the north of Derbyshire, England, included in the Pennine range of hills. The name, however, is extended, without definite limits, to cover the whole of the hilly district north of Buxton. The table-land reaches an elevation of 2088 ft. in Kinder Scout. The geological formation is millstone-grit, and the underlying beds are not domed, but cup-shaped, dipping inward from the flanks of the mass. The summit is a peaty moorland, through which masses of rock project at intervals. The name of this high plateau has from the 17th century been identified with “peak,” the pointed or conical top of a mountain, but the very early references to the district and certain places in it show clearly, as the New English Dictionary points out, that this connexion is unwarranted. The name appears in the Old English Chronicle (924) as Péaclond, of the district governed from the castle of Peveril of the Peak (see Derbyshire), and also in the name of the cavern under the hill at Castleton, Péac’s Arse. Péac, it has been suggested, is the name of a local deity or demon, and possibly may be indentified with Puck. For the etymology of “peak,” point, &c., and its variants or related words, “pick” and “pike,” see Pike.
# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Peale, Charles Willson

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​PEALE, CHARLES WILLSON (1741–1826), American portrait painter, celebrated especially for his portraits of Washington, was born in Queen Anne county, Maryland, on the 16th of April 1741. During his infancy the family removed to Chestertown, Kent county, Maryland, and after the death of his father (a country schoolmaster) in 1750 they removed to Annapolis. Here, at the age of 13, he was apprenticed to a saddler. About 1764 he began seriously to study art. He got some assistance from Gustavus Hesselius, a Swedish portrait painter then living near Annapolis, and from John Singleton Copley in Boston; and in 1767–1770 he studied under Benjamin West in London. In 1770 he opened a studio in Philadelphia, and met with immediate success. In 1772, at Mount Vernon, Peale painted a three-quarters-length study of Washington (the earliest known portrait of him), in the uniform of a colonel of Virginia militia. This canvas is now in the Lee Memorial Chapel of Washington and Lee University. He painted various other portraits of Washington; probably the best known in a full-length, which was made in 1778, and of which Peale made many copies. This portrait had been ordered by the Continental Congress, which, however, made no appropriation for it, and eventually it was bought for a private collection in Philadelphia. Peale painted two miniatures of Mrs Washington (1772 and 1777), and portraits of many of the famous men of the time, a number of which are in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. His portraits of Washington do not appeal so strongly to Americans as do those of Gilbert Stuart, but his admitted skill as a draughtsman gives to all of his work considerable historical value. Peale removed to ​Philadelphia in 1777, and served as a member of the committee of public safety, he aided in raising a militia company, became a lieutenant and afterwards a captain, and took part in the battles of Trenton, Princeton and Germantown. In 1779–1780 he was a member of the Pennsylvania assembly, where he voted for the abolition of slavery—he freed his own slaves whom he had brought from Maryland. In 1801 he undertook, largely at his own expense, the excavation of the skeletons of two mastodons in Ulster and Orange counties, New York, and in 1802 he established at Philadelphia Peale’s Museum He was one of the founders, in 1805, of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts at Philadelphia. At the age of eighty-one Peale painted a large canvas, “Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda,” and at eighty-three a full-length portrait of himself, now in the Academy of the Fine Arts. He died at his country home, near Germantown, Pennsylvania, on the 22nd of February 1826.
His brother, James Peale (1749–1831), also an artist, painted two portraits of Washington (one now the property of the New York Historical Society, and the other in Independence Hall, Philadelphia), besides landscapes and historical compositions.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carr, Joseph William Comyns

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CARR, JOSEPH WILLIAM COMYNS (1849-1916), English art critic and dramatist, was born in London March 1 1849, his father being a member of an old Cumberland yeoman family. Educated at the university of London, he was called to the bar in 1869, but soon became a writer of art criticism for the Pall Mall Gazette and, after 1875, editor of L'Art. He also founded and edited the English Illustrated Magazine, and was associated with Charles Hallé in the founding of the New Gallery, an offshoot from the Grosvenor Gallery, in 1888. In his later years he engaged in theatrical enterprises, and he was the adapter, alone or in collaboration, of a good many plays, notably Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd (1882) and the version of King Arthur produced by Sir Henry Irving at the Lyceum theatre in 1895. He published Some Eminent Victorians (1908) and Coasting Bohemia (1914), both containing reminiscences of his own early life and the people he had known. He died in London Dec. 12 1916.
See J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories, by his wife (1920).
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carrel, Alexis

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CARREL, ALEXIS (1873-), Franco-American surgeon, was born at Sainte-Foy-les-Lyon, France, June 28 1873. He graduated at the university of Lyons (L.B., 1890; Sc.B., 1891; M.D., 1900), and for two years was prosecteur à la faculté de médecine at that university. In 1909 he became a member of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York. There he won world-wide fame by his experiments in transplanting human organs. In 1912 he read before the American Medical Association a paper on Preservation of Tissues and its Application to Surgery. The possibility of keeping alive tissues removed from the organism led to his seeking practical means of preserving them for surgical use. He was awarded a Nobel prize in 1912 for his contributions to surgical knowledge. On the outbreak of the World War he returned to France and devised the Carrel-Dakin treatment of wounds. Using H. D. Dakin's preparation, a neutral solution of hypochlorite of sodium, Carrel's apparatus keeps the wound continually moist. Countless amputations were avoided, healing was rapid, and scars supple. In 1919 he resumed his work at the Rockefeller Institute.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Capps, Edward

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​CAPPS, EDWARD (1866—), American classical scholar, was born at Jacksonville, Ill., Dec. 21 1866. He was educated at Illinois College (A.B. 1887) and Yale (Ph.D. 1891). In 1890 he was appointed tutor at Yale. In 1892 he joined the faculty of the newly-founded university of Chicago as professor of Greek language and literature, remaining such until 1907. In 1903 he was special lecturer at Harvard, and during the next two years studied at Athens and Halle. During 1906–7 he was managing editor of Classical Philology, in 1907 was elected president of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, and the same year was called to Princeton as professor of classics. In 1914 he was elected president of the American Philological Association, and in 1917 was Turnbull lecturer on poetry at Johns Hopkins. In 1918 he was appointed head of the American Red Cross commission to Greece with the rank of colonel. In 1920 he was appointed minister to Greece, resigning in March 1921 and returning to Princeton. A leading authority on the Greek theatre, he contributed much to philological journals.
His works include The Stage in the Greek Theatre (1891); From Homer to Theocritus (1901); The Introduction of Comedy into the ​City Dionysia: a Chronological Study in Greek Literary History (1903) and Four Plays of Menander (1910). He was editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago Decennial Publications, 29 volumes.
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Carlisle, George James Howard, 9th Earl of

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​CARLISLE, GEORGE JAMES HOWARD, 9th Earl of (1843–1911) (see 5.341), died in London April 161911. He was succeeded by his son, Charles James Stanley Howard (b. 1867), well known as a Unionist politician under the name of Visct. Morpeth. The 10th earl died Jan. 20 1912, and was succeeded by his son, George Josslyn L’Estrange Howard (b. 1895).
# 1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Capes, Bernard Edward Joseph

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​Capes, Bernard Edward Joseph (1854–1918), British novelist, was born in London Aug. 30 1854 and educated at Beaumont College. He was a nephew of John Moore Capes, a prominent figure in the Oxford Movement, and was brought up a Roman Catholic. Originally intended for the army, he was prevented from taking a commission by a mistake as to the age at which he should have presented himself for examination. He was then put into a tea-broker's office and for some years struggled with uncongenial work, finally abandoning it to study art at the Slade School, London. In 1888 he joined the publishing firm of Eglington & Co. and succeeded Clement Scott as editor of The Theatre. In 1892 the firm came to an end, and he made an unsuccessful experiment in rabbit farming. But in 1896 he won a prize offered by the Chicago Record for a novel of mystery and henceforth devoted his energies to fiction. His novels, 36 in number, were mostly tales of adventure, some of them historical. They include The Lake of Wine (1898); From Door to Door (1900); A Jay of Italy (1905); A Rogue's Tragedy (1906); The Story of Fifine (1914) and Moll Davis (1916). He published also a volume of verse. He died at Winchester Nov. 2 1918.