Explorer. Born Devon. The first European, while on an expedition with Richard Burton to East Africa in 1858, to discover Lake Victoria. On a subsequent journey with James Grant in 1862, he confirmed its northern outlet as the source of the Nile. Burton queried whether Speke really had found the source of the Nile and the two fell out. Murchison arranged a debate between them. Two days before this debate Speke left a lunch where Burton was present, to go on a partridge shoot. Climbing over a wall he shot himself. Suicide was suspected but never proved. Since his death there have been suggestions that he was a repressed homosexual, although he is known to have fathered a child in Buganda, and even that he and Burton had had an intimate relationship.
Other Subjects
Charles Coombs
Role on the lost expedition: Able seaman on SS Erebus. See John Franklin.
Thomas Darlington
Role on the lost expedition: Petty officer on SS Terror. See John Franklin.
Sir Francis Galton
Biostatistician, human geneticist and eugenicist. Born at The Larches, Sparkbrook, Birmingham, a half-cousin of Charles Darwin. An enthusiastic traveller, particularly in Africa. Darwin's publicati...
Francis Pocock
Role on the lost expedition: Able seaman on SS Erebus. See John Franklin.
Dr. Edward Adrian Wilson
Born Cheltenham. One of Scott's four companions who died with him, returning from the South Pole. Cheltenham honours Wilson with a statue on the Promenade and an exhibition in the town museum.
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Albert Edward Dack
Albert Edward Dack is the boy lying on his side on the front right in the photograph of the scout troop. Albert Edward Dack was born on 1 August 1899 in Walworth, the fourth of the ten children of...
Moses Jethro James
Drowned in the 1898 HMS Albion disaster, aged 14. Buried in grave 2 at the memorial in East London Cemetery.
Battle of Culloden
Final confrontation of the 1745 Jacobite Rising and the last battle fought on British soil. The supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie fought King George II's forces led by the Duke of Cumberland. T...
Old Well, Tottenham
N15, High Street
The high plaque on the building behind reads: "AD 1847, Sunday and Infant School". History in Pictures has a photo of this corner c.1900....
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