On this day, February 5, 1885, news reached London that the Mahdists had taken Khartoum and killed General Charles George Gordon. The news would prompt an expedition to rescue Emin Pasha, the Governor of the Egyptian province of Equatoria.
The “Great Sedition Trial” uncovered shocking connections at the time with the German reich that we were fighting, and challenged the idea that the nation was of a single mind during the war. It also challenged exactly how far the national commitment to freedom of speech and opinion reached, especially in extraordinary times.