Elihu Burritt: An American's View Of Victorian England

It is always interesting to read what others think of us. In recent years we have had Bill Bryson giving us his thought-provoking views on England and the English, but a century and a half ago one of his compatriots did the same thing, albeit for a specific area of the country.

- Brian Conduit

This man was Elihu Burritt, who was the United States Consul in Birmingham at the time and his consular duties obliged him to travel extensively all over Birmingham, the adjoining Black Country and many of the rural areas of Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Shropshire. In 1868 he published a book about these journeys called Walks in the Black Country and its Green Borderland.

Elihu Burritt was in many ways a remarkable man. He came from a humble background, born the son of a labourer in New Britain, Connecticut, in 1810. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to a blacksmith and soon acquired the nickname of the “learned blacksmith” because of his thirst for knowledge. He had an enormous appetite for books and, for someone of little formal education, developed a surprising fluency in several languages. Later he became a well-respected crusader for world peace and travelled widely throughout America and Europe, attending international congresses and writing numerous books, articles and pamphlets. He also widened his activities to include other worthy contemporary causes, including the antislavery campaign in his own country and the temperance movement. One cause that he espoused was the promotion of a cheap universal postal system, believing that greater communication amongst peoples and nations could lessen the likelihood of war in the future.