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IMAGE: Sarah Angelina, Henry, Sarah & Herbert Dyke Acland, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, albumen print, c. 1860.
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IMAGE: Sarah Angelina, Henry, Sarah & Herbert Dyke Acland, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, albumen print, c. 1860.

Letters of a Distinguished Physician:
Sir Henry Wentworth Acland

The Royal Tour of the British North American Colonies, 1860

Letters:
Map
Sir Henry Wentworth Acland and his wife Sarah with their daughter Sarah Angelina, and fourth son, Herbert, c. 1860

Letters of a Distinguished Physician:
Sir Henry Wentworth Acland

The Royal Tour of the British North American Colonies, 1860

Acland’s Letters: Fifth Letter

Prince Edward Island

August 7, 1860

Fredericton to Hantsport, N.S.

Fredericton left at 6 by Steamer down St John’s – saluted variously by the way & all of us in various degrees knocked up.

Reach Castleton [Carleton] side of St John’s N.B. at 2 – drive through – sawmills -Embark in “Styx,” Captain Vesey – fine passage up bay of Fundy – anchor off Hansport [Hantsport] at 3 A.M. of 8th.

“Colonial Colloquy in a Railway Carriage. Windsor to Truro, ” Aug 7 1860.
“Colonial Colloquy in a Railway Carriage. Windsor to Truro Aug 7 1860. The Secretary for the Colonies and a Colonial Secretary.”

The Duke of Newcastle and Joseph Howe shared a seat on a rail line for which Howe was largely responsible. As provincial secretary and chief commissioner for the railroad, Howe determined that Nova Scotia should arrange its own financing and build its own railways as public works after he failed to obtain imperial credit in England. The work was completed in 1858 without either financial scandal or bumbling, thus defying those who maintained that the only figures the gifted orator understood were figures of speech. Howe had ardently promoted support for the Crimean War when the Duke of Newcastle was Secretary of War. He revered British institutions and before a confederation of the colonies seemed likely he had advocated for participation of colonials in the British House of Commons as part of the government of empire.

Contextualized

Windsor, Truro to Pictou

8th Go ashore at 6:30 – drive to Windsor without upsetting – public breakfast there – by Rail to Truro at 12. Public Luncheon – Address & School inspection.11 Off in “traps & four” to Pictou, reach it at 6. Met “Flying Fish,” Captain Hope – embark for “Hero” which is outside. When on board “Hero,” weigh for Prince Edward’s Island at 5 A.M. on 9th.

Normal School and Model School

At Truro, the royal party visited educational institutions that were part of the period’s movement towards education of the general populace:

a model school for practice-teaching established in 1857 and a provincial Normal School established in 1855 to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy. The impetus for establishing the Normal School at Truro came from William Dawson, Nova Scotia’s first superintendent of education prior to his appointment as principal of McGill University in 1855. Dawson also recommended the introduction of a standard curriculum for all schools and a system of taxation to finance them.

To establish the Normal School at Truro, as superintendent of education William Dawson visited schools in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts where the first normal school was established in 1839 by the educational reformer, Thomas Mann.

The program for teacher training at the Normal School in Truro was also modelled on the Glasgow Normal School established in 1837 as Britain’s first institution for the training of teachers. Like the Glasgow school, the Normal School at Truro adopted the influential, Rousseau-based theory of education of Johann Pestalozzi. This Swiss educator maintained that all learning must enter through the door of the senses, a departure both from the more interior world of traditional verbal learning and from the Madras schools established in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick which featured the monitorial use of older pupils for instruction and repetition in large groups.

When Prince Edward Island joined the other provinces in confederation in 1873, it was motivated in large part by its financial difficulties and by the promise of help in buying out the landowners to bring an end to the century-long problem.

Jane Rupert

Charlottetown, P.E.I.

Land on afternoon having reached at 12. Pouring wet. The usual Arches & decorations – Charlotte Town a poor place.22 In the Evening the usual Governor’s party – Secretary, Judges, Lawyers who are apparatus of Government.

10th Fine day – Levee at 11 at Government House. Addresses at 12:30 at the Provincial House – Judge Peters – Luncheon at Government House – Music & Party on lawn at 3:30 – Were all photographed – Go out shooting in the wood with H.R.H. and Governor – Jay – Goat-sucker and Thrush – good young specimens for Museum at Osborne – All Ride – H.R.H. also bathes – I to Asylum33 with Orlebar & Dr Hobkirk, F.R.C.S. England – Dinner – Ball – I home at 11:30

Aug. 11th – I breakfast with Captain Orlebar at his house – his wife, 2 daughters (don’t go to balls), 4 sons – give lesson in drawing – home at 10. Indians come to see the Queen’s Son – make sketches – off at 12 – Luncheon on board to French Commodore of the Pomona, Marquis de Montagnac. Off at 2 for Gaspé.

“Mrs Thomas Thomas, Micmac woman, PEI.” August 11, 1860.

The Prince of Wales received a group of Mi’kmaq on the lawns of the lieutenant governor’s residence. Although the Mi’kmaq had inhabited Prince Edward Island for 2,000 years, after the British assumed control they had neither treaties nor land set aside for them. Moved by their dire poverty, the gathering had been organized by one of the colony’s two commissioners of Indian Affairs who asked that land be granted to them with full title so that they could farm. The woman in Acland’s portrait wears a white scarf typical of Acadian dress and a traditional Mi’kmaq hood, a reflection of the mutual cultural influence between Mi’kmaq and Acadians from the time when French settlements were first established around the Bay of Fundy in the early seventeenth century. A remnant of Acadians among those who had escaped or returned after their expulsion by the British in mid eighteenth century survived along with Mi’kmaq in a poor corner of Prince Edward Island.

NEXT: Sixth Letter
Charlottetown, “a poor place”

To establish Nova Scotia as a colony had cost Britain £600,000.

Because of this expense, in Prince Edward Island a different approach was taken through an experiment in colonial land-owning that attempted to make its cost of development self-financed. Instead of government-controlled settlement through the allocation of Crown Land, the island was divided into sixty-seven lots of 20,000 acres granted mostly by lottery in London to military and political persons and to a few owed favours by the British Government. Many became absentee landowners who failed to fulfil their obligation to secure settlers on 200 acre properties within ten years. Land remained vacant, violence frequently erupted between land agents and tenants, and the quit-rents of the large proprietors meant to finance the costs of government, including the asylum, fell quickly into arrears. In 1860, Samuel Cunard, the Nova Scotia shipping magnate who lived in London, owned 160,000 acres managed locally by his son-in-law, Judge James Peters, who had written on scientific agricultural practices such as using charcoal to check rust in wheat and mildew in other crops. In the same year, a land commission chaired by Joseph Howe recommended an imperial loan of £100,000 to repurchase land. When Prince Edward Island joined the other provinces in confederation in 1873, it was motivated in large part by its financial difficulties and by the promise of help in buying out the landowners to bring an end to the century-long problem.

Squalid asylum

c.f. Appendix: Notes on the four Atlantic Colonies: Medical Arrangements. Acland describes how he is appalled by the asylum in Prince Edward Island as representative of the worst conditions for housing the indigent insane prior to the introduction of the high ideal of moral therapy and its hope of cure.

Contextualized notes provided by Jane Rupert

Contextualized Notes

Normal School and Model School

At Truro, the royal party visited educational institutions that were part of the period’s movement towards education of the general populace:

a model school for practice-teaching established in 1857 and a provincial Normal School established in 1855 to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy. The impetus for establishing the Normal School at Truro came from William Dawson, Nova Scotia’s first superintendent of education prior to his appointment as principal of McGill University in 1855. Dawson also recommended the introduction of a standard curriculum for all schools and a system of taxation to finance them.

To establish the Normal School at Truro, as superintendent of education William Dawson visited schools in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts where the first normal school was established in 1839 by the educational reformer, Thomas Mann.

The program for teacher training at the Normal School in Truro was also modelled on the Glasgow Normal School established in 1837 as Britain’s first institution for the training of teachers. Like the Glasgow school, the Normal School at Truro adopted the influential, Rousseau-based theory of education of Johann Pestalozzi. This Swiss educator maintained that all learning must enter through the door of the senses, a departure both from the more interior world of traditional verbal learning and from the Madras schools established in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick which featured the monitorial use of older pupils for instruction and repetition in large groups.

Charlottetown, “a poor place”

To establish Nova Scotia as a colony had cost Britain £600,000.

Because of this expense, in Prince Edward Island a different approach was taken through an experiment in colonial land-owning that attempted to make its cost of development self-financed. Instead of government-controlled settlement through the allocation of Crown Land, the island was divided into sixty-seven lots of 20,000 acres granted mostly by lottery in London to military and political persons and to a few owed favours by the British Government. Many became absentee landowners who failed to fulfil their obligation to secure settlers on 200 acre properties within ten years. Land remained vacant, violence frequently erupted between land agents and tenants, and the quit-rents of the large proprietors meant to finance the costs of government, including the asylum, fell quickly into arrears. In 1860, Samuel Cunard, the Nova Scotia shipping magnate who lived in London, owned 160,000 acres managed locally by his son-in-law, Judge James Peters, who had written on scientific agricultural practices such as using charcoal to check rust in wheat and mildew in other crops. In the same year, a land commission chaired by Joseph Howe recommended an imperial loan of £100,000 to repurchase land. When Prince Edward Island joined the other provinces in confederation in 1873, it was motivated in large part by its financial difficulties and by the promise of help in buying out the landowners to bring an end to the century-long problem.

Squalid asylum

c.f. Appendix: Notes on the four Atlantic Colonies: Medical Arrangements. Acland describes how he is appalled by the asylum in Prince Edward Island as representative of the worst conditions for housing the indigent insane prior to the introduction of the high ideal of moral therapy and its hope of cure.

Contextualized notes provided by Jane Rupert