| Main Performers | Mr Henry Morton Stanley - speaker |
| Secondary Performers | Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff (President of the Royal Geographical Society) - speaker |
| Royal Presence | HRH The Prince of Wales,
HRH Duke of Edinburgh,
HRH The Princess of Wales,
HRH The Princess Victoria,
HRH The Princess Maud |
| Performance Notes | The Society held a meeting to receive the explorer Henry Morton Stanley on his return from Africa. The Times estimated that there were 8,000 people in the Hall and the RGS produced a special gold medal for Dr Stanley, which was presented to him by the Prince of Wales. Fellow explorers Captain William G Stairs, Dr Thomas H Parke, Captain Robert H Nelson, Mr Arthur J Mounteney-Jephson and Mr William Bonny also received special medals.
"A multitudinous and brilliant audience assembled yesterday at the Royal Albert Hall to hear Mr Stanley deliver his address to the Royal Geographical Society and recount his adventures and discoveries. As the audience was unprecedented in size and distinction, so the tale to which is listened was of unrivalled interest and novelty. Mr Stanley's latest travels have practically completed our knowledge of the great Equatorial region of Africa, and it is not a little curious to note that in completing it he has in many respects merely restored life, truth, and actuality to legends and geographical traditions which have come down to us since prehistoric times.
Mr Stanley's address divides itself into three main heads - the description of the forest region, with its primeval inhabitants, the pygmies, the investigation of the ethnography of the Equatorial region, and the elucidation of the geography of the real and ultimate sources of the Nile. Of the vast forest region and its impenetrable and perpetual gloom Mr Stanley's description conveyed a vivid impression to his hearers, while the effect of his words was enhanced by the spectacle of the wilderness of green on the enormous map which served to exhibit his route to the assembled mulitude he was addressing."
(The Times, 6 May 1890) |
| Related Archival Material | Illustration |