3-008-626 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Soiree of the Social Science Association at Westminster Hall, [London], 1862. 'The National Association for the Promotion of Social Science...[issued] cards of invitation in such numbers that, within half an hour after the doors opened, the building was thronged to a degree that rendered locomotion a difficult performance. The company...dispersed about the various parts of the building, which were thrown open on the occasion...The House of Commons...was invaded in every part. The Treasury benches bore decidedly more beauty, if less wisdom, than upon ordinary occasions, and ladies took the chair at all hours throughout the evening...one might almost imagine that "women's rights" had been ceded, and that the feminine portion of the creation had been admitted to a full participation in the blessings of the representative system...The great feature of the evening, however, was Westminster Hall...[which] had been made an integral part of the new building...Far down as the eye could reach it rested on a dense mass of flags, figures, flowers, and gay colours, the whole thrown into brilliant relief by pillars supporting crowns of flame. Overhead the lines in the noble roof stood out so clearly that the ribs appeared to cross each other like latticework'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.