Williams' Lantern and Slides
The circumstances by which Williams obtained his lantern point to a London lantern and slide manufacturer. Williams’ letter to his son indicates that he did not purchase the lantern himself, nor did he receive one from the London Missionary Society. Instead, Williams relied on para-missionary society friendships to solicit a donation. Unknowingly, this tactic would become a precedent that other missionaries would follow, including David Livingstone and Samuel Crowther. Williams briefly mentions his benefactor in the letter, saying that the lantern
Williams probably omitted a more extended introduction to his benefactor because his son would have known who Mr. Walker was. While there are several wealthy Australians who share this surname, Williams’ biographer Ebenezer Prout clarifies that the “late Thos. Walker, Esq.” was responsible for giving Williams the magic lantern.[3] This particular Thomas Walker was no stranger to the LMS. In fact, he had played such a significant role in multiple evangelistic organizations that the Chronicle included a lengthy obituary for him in their February 1839 issue.[4] Walker had made his fortune as a partner in a firm that produced helmets, shakos, and other accouterments for the British army.[5] He not only actively supported the LMS but he also contributed to the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Church Missionary Society, and the Irish Evangelical Society among other philanthropic organizations based in London.... is a very valuable present and I shall ever feel obliged to good Mr. Walker for it.[2]
Prout provides the following account of an exchange between Williams and Walker about the lantern. While it’s unclear how Prout became privy to this private conversation, this exchange probably took place between June 1834 and April 1838 while Williams was on furlough in England. This passage from Williams’ biography is worth quoting at length because it represents Williams’ ability to develop local networks of support.
In her study of literary representations of the South Pacific, Vanessa Smith includes this account in her brief analysis of Williams’ lantern shows. She argues that the lantern advanced Williams’ “didactic project,” though he took caution to avoid confusion between Protestant and Catholic doctrine in his request for martyrological material.[7] While Williams’ lantern show included educational subjects and was no doubt intended to serve as an instructional aid, I think that Williams' conversation with Walker is best understood as a representation of how Williams forged friendships to support his evangelistic work. Williams’ militaristic language struck a chord with Walker, for he cast his evangelization efforts as no less than spiritual warfare. In this battle, soldiers were not kitted out with shakos, muskets, and cartridges from Walker’s firm but with “philosophical apparatus.” These mechanisms, also referred to as “philosophical instruments” or “philosophical toys,” tended to include Leyden jars, electrostatic generators with glass disks, microscopes, and telescopes. In this case, “philosophical apparati” function as weapons of defense, for they would be deployed to prevent other forms of Christianity from taking hold.While on a visit to that excellent man, Mr. Walker said to him, “I want to make you a present: what shall it be?” Thanking him for the kind intention, Mr. Williams replied, that as the Romish priests were on their way to the islands with electrifying machines, and other philosophical apparatus, by which they expected to impress the natives with their preternatural power, he thought he might legitimately, if it were necessary, turn their weapons against themselves; as he intended, on the voyage, to translate Fox’s Martyrology, he should like to illustrate it by the magic lantern. The idea pleased Mr. Walker, who procured for him a large instrument, and in addition to numerous other slides on Scripture, English, and natural history, ordered a series to be well executed from the best plates in the Martyologist’s work, representing the tortures and deaths of faithful confessors of Protestant Christianity.[6]
Though described here as the weapon of choice for enemy combatants, other Protestant missionaries had requested, obtained, and brought such devices with them to the mission field.[8] Williams was not the first missionary to ask the LMS’s supporters for such devices specifically for the South Seas mission. In a lengthy letter to the foreign mission board that was subsequently published in the July and August 1825 issues of the Chronicle, Rev. Daniel Tyerman and George Bennet, Esq. describe the need for teaching materials based on their assessment of missionary stations in the South Pacific, which they had visited on the LMS’s behalf. Tyerman and Bennet had built libraries on Tahiti and Taha’a with materials that they had intended for personal use.
Their call for contributions seems to have been largely ignored, for there is only one recorded donor who gave funds specifically for philosophical instruments.[10] While the LMS felt comfortable sharing missionaries’ requests with their readership, the lack of financial support for these kinds of devices suggests that many within the society’s circles had misgivings about the degree to which these instruments functioned as spectacle. Indeed, other missionary societies objected to lantern shows in Hawaii on the grounds that “it did not become God-fearing Christians to take pleasure in such vain amusements.”[11] In his conversation with Walker, Williams attempted to allay these fears by emphasizing the educational nature of his proposed lantern show. Walker’s active support of schools and educational organizations suggests that Walker may have been particularly interested in visual modes of instruction, for he was a supporter of an “Asylum for Educating Deaf and Dumb Children.”[12] The legitimacy of Williams’ request for lantern equipment is bolstered by his evocation of a specific genre of lantern show: the illustrated lecture.Many of the books which we had brought out with us for our own use, we have given to these institutions, and most of the philosophical instruments for the use of the school. We strongly recommend to the religious public to send contributions of both books and philosophical apparatus for the use of both these important institutions.[9]
When Williams made his request, the lantern had been gaining traction as an educational tool thanks to Carpenter and Westley’s copperplate-printed slides. As a form of semi-mechanical reproduction, copperplate printing dramatically reduced the time needed to make lantern slides, thus enabling Carpenter and Westley to dominate the lantern slide market. At this time, there was no other manufacturer that could produce slides on Carpenter and Westley’s scale. With the exception of the plates from Fox’s Actes and Monuments, the firm produced lantern lecture sets on all of the subjects described in Williams’ letter to his son: natural history, the kings and queens of England, and Bible stories. Each of these lectures were in production between 1823 and 1850. Elements of Zoology (1823), a treatise on natural history that also functioned as a script for his set of copperplate-printed zoological slides, had made Carpenter so successful that three years after its debut, he moved his shop from Birmingham to 24 Regent Street in London, just around the corner from Thomas Walker’s firm.[13]
The material archive through which to study Carpenter & Westley’s lantern lectures consists of manufacturers catalogs, scripts, and, of course, slides. In the sections to follow, I focus on the materials related to the climax of Williams’ lantern show: the sequence depicting Christ’s crucifixion. Comparing extant examples of slides to Carpenter & Westley’s catalog enables me to assess to what extent this image varied across versions of the set, to place this image as part of a longer visual sequence, and to identify passages of scripture that served as a script.
[1] Food for the Flames: Idols and Missionaries in Central Polynesia. San Francisco: Beak Press, 2011. pp 142-147.
[2] John Williams. Letter to Samuel Williams, 7 February 1839. CWM/LMS/Personal Papers/ South Seas Personal/Box 2. Council for World Mission Archive, School of Oriental and African Studies Library, London, England. 30 June 2016.
[3] The most eminent of these Australian Thomas Walkers was a merchant who arrived in Sydney in 1822, became a magistrate in 1835, and then president of the Bank of New South Wales in 1869. This Walker also had philanthropic leanings, for his will contained funds to found and support several hospitals. See W. Joy, 'Walker, Thomas (1804–1886)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/walker-thomas-1101/text3929, published first in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 26 November 2018. There were several Sydney merchants who imported lantern equipment; Charles Beilby had phantasmagoric slides on offer while Davenport’s offered French magic lanterns, slides and other “French toys.” See “On Sale, at the WAREHOUSE of the undersigned.” The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1843). 6 May 1834. Accessed via Trove 8 June 2018. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2216075 “To be sold." The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803-1842) 11 March 1834. Access via Trove 8 June 2018. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2215608 and “French Toys," advertisement, The Australian (Sydney, NSW: 1824-1848) Friday, 4 August 1837. Accessed via Trove. 8 June 2018. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/36855562
[4] “Brief memoir of the late Thomas Walker, Esq.” The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, vol. 17, no. 2 (February 1839). pp. 53-55.
[5] His business partner, Thomas Hawkes, Esq. was also a generous donor to several missionary societies. Walker’s obituary in the Chronicle speculates that Walker was inspired by Hawkes’ philanthropic endeavors. The company’s warehouse was included in John Tallis’ London Street Views (no. 25, 14 Piccadilly). See Baldwin Hamey. “Hawkes, Moseley and sons, military warehouse.” London Street Views, 02 December 2014, https://londonstreetviews.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/hawkes-moseley-and-sons-military-warehouse. Accessed 29 May 2019.
[6] Ebenezer Prout, Memoirs of the life of hte Rev. John Williams, missionary to Polynesia. Second edition. London: John Snow, 1843. pp. 537-538.
[7] Literary Culture and the Pacific: nineteenth-century textual encounters Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. p. 59.
[8] Most notably, Alexander Duff, a Church of Scotland missionary, had brought a range of scientific instruments with him to Kolkata. The Church of Scotland’s missionary society continued to send philosophical apparati to its missionaries across India, as evidenced by expenditures in their ledger. See “Payments out of the Subscriptions and Donations for Special Purposes, 31st July 1839-31st July 1840.” Accounts of the India Mission Committee (after 1846, Foreign Mission Committee), 1839-48; of the Bombay mission, 1838-48; and of the Calcutta Mission, 1839-48; and lists of collections for and donations to foreign missions, 1839-1848. MS. 7620 National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. 24 May 2016. For an account of Duff’s college, its library and philosphical apparati, see Rajesh Kochhar’s “Hindoo College Calcutta Revisited: Its Pre-History and the Role of Rammhun Roy,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 72, 2011. pp. 841–862. www.jstor.org/stable/44146776.
[9] “Extracts from Letter of the Deputation dated Sydney, 12th November. (Continued from p. 304).” The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, vol. 3, no. 8, August 1825. p. 346.
[10] John Morton, Esq. from Nailsworth (Gloucestershire) donated 13l 10s for the purchase of philosophical apparatus for the South Seas mission in November 1835. “Missionary Contributions.” The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, vol. 13, no. 11, November 1835. pp. 483.
[11] From Otto von Kotzebue’s A New Voyage Around the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. London: Colburn and Bentley, 1830, vol. II, pp. 258-9. Quoted in Literary Culture and the Pacific: nineteenth-century textual encounters, p. 59.
[12] “Brief memoir of the late Thomas Walker, Esq.” The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, vol. 17, no. 2 (February 1839). pp. 55.
[13] It’s unclear to what extent Walker participated in the day-to-day business of the firm by 1826, but the close proximity between Carpenter & Westley’s shop on Regent Street and the military warehouse on Picadilly suggests that Walker may have passed the lantern manufacturer’s business on the way to visit his own.
