ABSTRACT
One of the pioneers of the penny post, Henry Cole, who had worked with Rowland Hill, was now a civil servant employed at the Public Record Office, conceived the idea of a great national exhibition of arts and manufactures. He talked about it to the London builder Thomas Cubitt and to Richard Cobden, one of the leaders of the Free Trade movement. On 3 January 1850, a few weeks after the Manning's were hanged, a Royal Commission to plan the Great Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures of All Nations was appointed, consisting of Prince Albert, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Stanley the Opposition Leader, Gladstone, Charles Lyell the geologist and others. It is not too hard to imagine Maria Manning employed as a French interpreter for the large numbers of French, Swiss and Belgian visitors who came to London for the Great Exhibition.
