Stephen Michael Channing

Turner's Margate Through Contemporary Eyes - the Viney Letters Stephen Michael Channing

Surprisingly, one of the best sources of information on life in Margate in the early 19th century was a little town in Australia. Stewart Viney had attended school and later worked in Margate, living just a few doors away from where the artist Turner was staying with his mistress Mrs Booth, but then joined the Bendigo Gold Rush. Finding only mixed fortune there, he progressed into journalism and produced many fascinating articles about the place where he had grown up and the people who had surrounded him. These have been fortunately rediscovered and edited into a single volume of great interest to local people and social historians alike.