09 September 1876

William Gladstone addresses a rally at Blackheath on the Balkan Question

Following the publication of his famous pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East three days earlier in which he had called for the Turks to be driven from the Balkans “bag and baggage”, Mr Gladstone speaks at a rally in Blackheath now employing less emotional language but using his physical presence and oratorical techniques to stir the crowd, talking in John Morley’s words ‘in slow sentences to imaginary Ottomans whom he seemed to hold before his visual eye’. This, as Roy Jenkins noted, was at a time when oratory was more popular than football.