The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-04-10 00:00:00

THE OPENING OF THE TOWER OF
LONDON.

Referring to the arrangement for the opening of the Tower
of London to the public, the Daily Telegraph, ia a leader,
remarks :

. . . Hitherto those who have wished to visit the
ancient fortress have been, perforce, compelled to sub-
mit to a double annoyance. In the first place, they
have been mulcted of a small fee, which, although in-
significant in itself, is annoying as a matter of principle
to those who hold that the Tower is, like Hampton
Court, or the British Museum, or the National Gal-
lery, or the Parks, national property, and as such
open to every-Englishman as a thing of right. Secondly,
they have been obliged to make their tour of inspection
in parties of from twelve to twenty, under the
charge of a warder or "beef-eater." The object of
this cicerone was generally to get rid of his
convoy as soon as possible; and since no one was
allowed to fall out of the party and gaze about him at
his leisure, while—we are sorry to be obliged to add—
the demeanour of the beef-eaters was, as a rule, not
always equal to their personal splendour of costume
and historic dignity, a visit to the Tower, without a
special permit from some one high in authority, was in
nine cases out of ten a trial both of temper and of
patience. If you ventured to linger for a moment
before a particular suit of armour that took your fancy,
or stopped to inspect a group of guns in which you
felt an interest, or halted to follow minutely some
record cut in the wall by an unhappy prisoner of whom
now not even the name tells its story, you were at once
desired to "move on," in much the same tone as that
in which a policeman addresses a suspicious loiterer.
If you remonstrated you were met with peremptory
rules; and, if you persisted in your remonstrance, you
were curtly warned that you could take your choice
either between keeping up with the party at the heels
of the guide or losing a sight of the place altogether.
It is an incalculable relief for the public to have seen
the last of these evil days, and to know that the red.
stockinged, beaver-hatted custodians will in future be
comparatively powerless to work their ancient will.
It is true, of course, that we have at present only two
open days in each week, and that a notice has been
issued to the effect that "the number of persons that
can be admitted at any one time will be limited," and.that
"the previous regulations will be enforced." But now
that the true principle has been mice asserted the rest
will probably follow in due progress of time, and the
Tower will soon be as free to the public for all intents
and purposes as are Westminster Hall, or Kew
Gardens, or the British Museum. . . .

. . . . Meantime, although the lions have long since
gone, and although the "Lady Jane Grey axe," or the
one shown as such, is, beyond all question, the axe that
was used for the execution of Lord Lovat, and was
specially made for that purpose, there is yet much in
the Tower over which it is pleasant to linger. There
are the suits of armour in the long gallery, which cer-
tainly bear out the assertion so often made by those
who are in no sense laudatores temporis acti that the
average statue of the present day exceeds that of our
forefathers. There are the strange old weapons—
halberds and pikes and poleaxes, and:quaint calivers and
crossbows and arquebusses and petronels ; and there are
the diabolical instruments of torture—the iron collar
with spikes, the thumbscrews, and the "scavenger's
daughter," which it is the fashion to say were brought
over in the Spanish Armada, but which, no doubt,
were in their time part of the regular furniture
of the chief gaoler's office; and there is also, or
ought to be somewhere, the rack itself, with its wheels
and levers, and the fearful " boots " with their wedges,
and the pincers and the brazier. But of all that the
Tower holds there is, perhaps, no set of objects so
generally popular with the great majority of visitors
as the regalia. As a matter of fact, these jewels nearly
all date since the Restoration, most of the ancient.
Royal ornaments which contained "crucifixes or super-
stitious pictures" having at the time of the Reformation
fallen victims to Protestant zeal. Diamonds, however,
are always diamonds; and although the only authentic
relic of the old regalia is, perhaps, the golden anoint-
ing spoon, the new jewel-house is, especially for
country cousins, the chief object of interest within the
whole curtilage of the fortress.
It is to be hoped, now that the Tower has ceased to
be what it ought never to have been allowed to become
—a sort of occasional peep show—that the visitors to it
will tend more and more to be drawn from that class
which goes not so much to gape at the big diamonds in
the Royal crown and to peep at the thumbscrews, as
to regard with an intelligent interest a building the
history of which, if written in full, is in effect the
history of England. Putting aside mere tradition,
such as that which makes the so-called Blcody
Tower the scene of the murder of the two un-
happy Princes, or which ascribes the building of
the White Tower, not to the Conqueror, but to
Cmsar, there are distinct facts in the annals of
the great fortress, attested by contemporary
record, and of which a history might be written
more stirring than any romance. In the Tower, for
centuries, our Kings lived and held their Court; we
know who have passed under Traitors'-gate, who have
been imprisoned in the square Beauchamp Tower, who
have been beheaded on Tower-hill or within the pre-
cinct of the moat. In some facts are doubtful, the
majority are beyond question—unless, indeed, we are
to suppose that the inscriptions cut on the dungeon
walls are mere forgeries of the warders. It is not
for us, however, to trench upon the sacred domain
which Mr. Harrison Ainsworth and Mr. Dixon
have made their own especial freehold. Per-
haps of all the reflections which the place
suggests, the strangest, and yet the one least
likely to offer itself to the ordinary sightseer is the
wonderful way in which villainous saltpetre has
changed the course of the world's history. Time was
when the Tower's strength could "laugh a siege to
scorn." Now a single iron-clad moored off the opposite
bank could knock the whole place into builder's rub-
bish in an hour or two. The great pile still serves, it
is true, as an armoury and a barracks; for all other
purposes it is useless. It is, in a word, one vast relic
in itself, older, more precious, and with richer associa-
tions than any of the lesser relics which it enshrines,
and in the history of its gloomy walls is written the
history of our national liberties.

On Saturday morning last, at the usual opening hour
of ten o'clock the entrance gate on Tower-hill was
surrounded by a considerable crowd of persons of both
sexes and all classes, who were admitted in groups of
50 at a time through a wicket-gate carefully guarded
on the inside by a soldier sentinel and one of the
Tower warders, in the full uniform of the Yeoman
Guard. Upon passing through the wicket-gate the
visitors were directed to the ticket office on the right
hand side, where upon application they were
supplied with a pass dated like a railway ticket.
Upon emerging from the ticket office into
the courtyard • they were taken in charge by a
warder and conducted over the place. The
usual routine was observed. The leading historical
events associated with the various parts of the fortress
visited were briefly explained by the accompanying
warder. Among those portions which seemed most
attractive to the visitors were the Armouries, the
White Tower, St. John's Chapel, and the Crown
Jewels room. Up to two o'clock the public had been
admitted under the regulations mentioned above, at
the rate of about 3io every hour. At that hour the
crowds outside the gates began considerably to in-
crease, but the greatest order prevailed, and Mr.
Ritchie, M. P., who had been in attendance for some
time in the courtyard, expressed his great satisfaction
with the conduct of the people assembled. Shortly
after two Mr. Hepworth Dixon arrived, accompanied by
Dr. Richardson, Mr. Cerdy, Jeaffreson, andsome half-
dozen gentlemen who had taken an interest in the move-
ment. Mr. Dixon, through Mr. Hughes, the yeoman
gaoler of the Tower, sent his card to Colonel Millman-,
the governor, requesting his permission to take round
the members of the working men's committee to the
various places of interest in the Tower not usually
open to the public, and this request was at once
granted. Mr. Dixon's party, which consisted of over
fifty persons, then enjoyed a privilege not accorded to
the gene( al public, and which they appeared highly to
appreciate. The tour of the fortress having been com-
pleted, including the vaults of the white Tower,
containing the stone recess, about 4ft. square, in
which Fawkes was immured previous to undergoing
' torture, and the apartment which served as the
prison of Lady Jane Gray, the latter being in
the official dwelling now occupied by Mr.
Hughes, Mr. Dixon assembled his party around the
space on the Tower-green, now railed in, and marked
in the centre by a slab of black stone, indicating the
spot on which the scaffold used to be erected. Having
referred to the scenes which had been enacted on that
spot, he said he thought it was the most appro-
priate place at which to end their short tour, and
which, thanks to the consideration of the Govern-
ment in acceding to the memorial of the working
men's committee, they would be able to repeat on
many succeeding days. The total number of persons
admitted day by day from ten o'clock until four o'clock
was officially stated to be 3,884, but hundreds went
away disappointed.
At five o'clock the members of the committee and
their friends assembled in the large room of the King's
Head Tavern, Tower-hill, when two resolutions were
adopted—one upon the motion of Mr. Robinson,
seconded by Mr. Gibbon, thanking Mr. Disraeli and
his Government for the readiness with which they had
conceded the boon to the people of throwing open the
Tower to the public on two days in each week; and
the second moved by Mr. Osborne, and seconded by
Mr. Brighty, thanking Mr. Hepworth Dixon for his