The triumphs and disasters of 1845

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: not France in 1789, convulsed by revolution, but Britain in 1845, when the period Dickens referred to as ‘the moving age’ was in danger of spinning out of control. It was the year when the SS Great Britain, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, left Liverpool docks on the first transatlantic crossing by an iron-built steamship; the Hungerford suspension bridge (another Brunel design) opened, and a Birmingham manufacturer obtained a patent ‘for Improvements in Springs to be applied to Girths, Belts and Bandages, and Improvements in the Manufacture of Elastic Bands’: the birth of the modern rubber band.

It was also the year when Sir John Franklin set out on the ill-fated expedition that would end in the icy wastes of the Canadian Arctic; the Yarmouth suspension bridge collapsed, killing dozens of spectators who had gathered to watch a clown being drawn down the river in a washing tub pulled by four geese; and a potato blight in Ireland saw the start of years of famine that would leave approximately two million starving or displaced.