Winston Churchill was paid $250 for a lecture in Cincinnati on this date in 1901
Winston Churchill, routinely voted as the greatest Englishman in polls and the subject of movies and best-selling biographies, made two visits to Cincinnati. Both times were as part of lecture tours of the United States and Canada.
Churchill’s first visit to the city was on a more than 30-city tour that brought him to Cincinnati on Jan. 15, 1901. He arrived in the city by train that morning from Detroit where had lectured the previous evening. That night’s appearance in Cincinnati would be Churchill’s sixth lecture in seven nights. The title of his talk was “The War as I Saw It,” during which he discussed the ongoing Boer War in South Africa, as well as gave an account of his own dramatic escape from a Boer prisoner of war camp in Pretoria.
The son of Lord Randolph Churchill and the American-born Jennie Jerome, Churchill was already in 1901 internationally famous. He had won headlines around the world for his daring escape and had been elected to the House of Commons in November 1900. Churchill was advertised as “the hero of five wars,” “author of six books” and “the future prime minister of England.” He was paid $250 for the Cincinnati lecture.
Churchill’s arrival in the city was noted in an ironic tone by an Enquirer reporter. After disembarking from the train, Churchill took a carriage to the St. Nicholas hotel. As observed by the reporter, he was wearing a “huge fur coat that would make a polar bear emerald-eyed with envy.”
He was accompanied by his valet. As he had not made a reservation at the hotel, Churchill found he was out of luck when he asked for a “room, bath and parlor.” No such room was available as the city was full of visitors. Undaunted Churchill hailed a cab and went to the Grand Hotel and again asked for a full suite. The clerk told him that with the many visitors in Cincinnati none was available, but he could have a large room and bath. After some consideration and discussion with the valet, Churchill took Room 102, where he admitted the Enquirer reporter for an interview. At midday he lunched with a party of business leaders at Gibson House.
That evening Churchill lectured at the Music Hall in Cincinnati. The lecture delivered in a conversational style with dry humor usually lasted about 90 minutes. It included 100 slides of politicians, generals and soldiers projected on a canvas screen using a kerosene lamp to illuminate glass slides, the PowerPoint of its day.
In Cincinnati he began his lecture with a slide of a Boer soldier which caused a cheer from the large audience. Churchill would not have been surprised by the reaction. He had encountered pro-Boer sentiment from earlier audiences. They had jeered British victories and cheered Boer successes. Rather than ignoring the pro-Boers in the audience, Churchill tried to win them over by praising the Boers and acknowledging their courage, saying, “You are quite right to applaud him.” He called the Boer “the most formidable fighting man in the world.” In Cincinnati, as reported by the Enquirer, in less than two hours, Churchill had talked “the crowd into such a state” that they cheered a slide of Lord Roberts, the British general, with almost the same enthusiasm as they had first cheered the Boers.
The Enquirer reporter recorded that the interest of the audience “never flagged” during the lecture and that Churchill had “a winning way with him.” Although, the lectures were a success, Churchill was still early in his career as a public speaker and some in his audiences noted some nervousness on his part, as well as a slight stammer and lisp. By the time he had reached Cincinnati, Churchill had resolved his contract dispute with his American booking agent, Major James Pond, who he thought vulgar. Pond in turn complained about having to pay for the bottle of champagne Churchill had for breakfast each morning.
Maintaining the pace of his tour, Churchill departed Cincinnati for Indianapolis where he lectured the next evening. He would return to the city 31 years later for another lecture. By then Churchill was 57 years old and a veteran politician with a controversial reputation. He was already politically isolated in Britain over his opposition to independence for India and would soon be warning of the threat of Nazi Germany. The Cincinnati stop on the tour took place on February 29, 1932. The start of the lecture series had been delayed after Churchill had been hit by a car while crossing Fifth Avenue in New York City on December 13, 1931. He was severely injured and spent a few weeks recovering in the Bahamas before starting the rescheduled tour at the end of January. On the tour he was accompanied by his daughter Diana as well as by a bodyguard due to threats received from Indian extremists. Churchill also had to deal with American prohibition laws, the force of which he tried to avoid by means of a doctor’s note.
Arriving by car from Indianapolis with a police motorcycle escort the day before his lecture, Churchill stayed at the Netherlands Plaza. With the world suffering through the Depression, Churchill lectured at the Taft Theatre that evening on the world economic crisis and Anglo-American friendship in a talk called, “The Destiny of the English-Speaking Peoples.” Tickets for the event were priced $1-$3. The Enquirer reported that Churchill, after being introduced by Mayor Wilson, spoke in a quiet and leisurely manner in delivering a “truly brilliant” address that was enthusiastically received by the audience. Churchill left Cincinnati immediately after the lecture by train for Detroit. He was scheduled to return to Cincinnati for a third time on another lecture tour that was planned for late 1938. However, the trip was cancelled. With the Munich Crisis and Europe on the brink of war, Churchill remained in Britain.
Bradley Tolppanen is a Winston Churchill historian and academic librarian at Eastern Illinois University.