SUNDAY-SCHOOLS 



SUNDERLAND 



809 



gave the number of Sunday-school teachers and 

 scholars throughout the world in 1890 as follows : 



Teachers. Scholars. 



England and Wales 616,941 6,733325 



Scotland 69,213 651,975 



Ireland 28,132 310,099 



Total United Kingdom 704,286 6,695,399 



United States of America 1,100,104 8,345,431 



European Continent. 68,308 1,027,177 



Australasia 49,283 580,227 



Canada and Newfoundland 57,212 490,109 



In connection with the several 



Missionary Societies in India 5,744 110,270 



Do. West Indies 9,523 108,233 



Do. Africa, China, Japan, Persia, 



and Central America 12,145 



Total 1,996,605 



17,720,135 



See RAGGED SCHOOLS, EDUCATION ; also Watson, 

 Sunday-school Union (1853); Gregory, Robert Raikes 

 (1880), and Centenary of Sunday-schools (1880); The 

 Modern Sunday-school; Sunday-school Handbook; Vin- 

 cent's American Sunday-school ; Inglis' Sunday-school. 



Sunderland, a seaport, municipal, county, 

 and parliamentary borough and market-town of 

 Durham, situated at the mouth of the Wear, 13 

 miles NE. of the city of Durham and 12 SE. of 

 Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The township of Sunder- 

 land is on the south side of the river, covering an 

 area of 219 acres, and forms but a small portion 

 of the municipal borough, which comprises also the 

 townships of Bishopwearmoutli, Monkwearmouth, 

 and Monkwearmouth Shore. Monkwearmouth 

 appears in history in 674 as the site of a monastery 

 erected by Benedict Biscop (q.v. ), and Bishopwear- 

 moutli in 930 as one of the places conferred by Athel- 

 8tan*on the monks of Lindisfarne then settled at 

 Chester-le-Street. The earliest indubitable refer- 

 ence to Sunderland itself does not occur till 1311. 

 Sunderland is a fine, well-built town, with broad, 

 clean streets and pleasant suburbs. Till the begin- 

 ning of the 19th century Sunderland was a very 

 inconsiderable place, but since then, owing to 

 the improvement of the harbour and the growth of 

 the Durham coal trade, it has developed with 

 reat rapidity. The principal public buildings and 

 institutions are the town-hall, a fine new building 

 in the style of the Italian Renaissance, erected 

 1887-90 ; the Free Library, Museum, Art Gallery, 

 and Winter Garden ( 1877-79 ) ; Sunderland Literary 

 Society and Subscription Library (1878); the 

 Theatre Royal (1853); the Avenue Theatre; the 

 Victoria Hall, the scene of the terrible disaster of 

 June 16, 1883, in which 182 children lost their 

 lives (1872); the Assembly Hall; the Workmen's 

 Hall ( 1868) ; the Liberal Club ( 1839) ; the County 

 Constitutional Club (18.90); the Infirmary (built 

 1865; enlarged 1879-87); the Orphan Asylum 

 ( 1860). There are twenty churches in the borough 

 (seventeen belonging to the Church of England 

 and three to the Roman Catholic Church). St 

 Peter's, Monkwearmouth, retains in a part of the 

 tower and west wall of the nave a remnant of the 

 7th-century building. There are between fifty 

 and sixty chapels and meeting-houses in the 

 borough belonging to the various dissenting bodies. 

 Sunderland possesses in the People's or Mowbray 

 Park an excellent recreation-ground. The portion 

 south of the railway was purchased in 1854, and 

 contains monuments of Havelock and Jack Craw- 

 ford. The portion north of the railway, called 

 the New or Extension Park, was purchased in 

 1866. The village of Roker, a popular watering- 

 place close to Monkwearmouth, also has a park 

 of 17 acres, opened in 1880. Two single-arch 

 iron bridges cross the Wear at a distance of 20 

 yards from each other. The older bridge, having 

 the large span of 236 feet, was built 1793-;96. It 

 was reconstructed and widened under the direction 

 of Robert Stephenson in 1858-59. The railway 



bridge was opened for traffic in 1879. The harbour 

 is formed by two piers, the one on the north being 

 617 yards long, that on the south 650 feet. A new 

 pier, starting from the south end of the terrace pro- 

 menade at Roker, is over 2000 feet long. Two other 

 piers protect the entrance to the south docks. 

 There are four docks at Sunderland capable of 

 accommodating the largest vessels the North 

 Dock (6 acres), the Hudson Dock, North ( 18 acres), 

 the Hudson Dock, South (14 acres), the Hendon 

 Dock (11 acres). Over 208,000 tons of shipping 

 are registered at the port of Sunderland, and in 

 1890, 6052 vessels of 2,342,161 tons cleared from it. 

 The annual shipments of coal and coke for the 

 last few years reached upwards of 4,000,000 

 tons. From the commissioners' staiths 15,000 

 tons can be shipped in a day. Other exports are 

 bottles and glass, earthenware, lime, iron, chem- 

 icals, patent fuel, and cement. The principal 

 imports are timber, props, iron ores, chalk, loam, 

 grain, flour, esparto grass, hay, straw, and tar. 

 Sunderland is famous for its iron shipbuilding- 

 yards, of which there are as many as thirteen on 

 the river. During 1890 eighty-six vessels, regis- 

 tering 125,612 tons, were launched on the Wear. 

 In 1889 the tonnage launched was 217,366. There 

 are also in the town extensive ironworks, forges, 

 anchor and chain works, glass and bottle works, 

 chemical works, roperies, paper-mills, breweries, and 

 lime-kilns. In Monkwearmouth is the Pemberton 

 coal-pit, 381 fathoms deep, several of the workings 

 extending under the sea. Sunderland returns 

 two members to parliament. Pop. of parliament- 

 ary borough (1851)67,394; (1881) 124,760; (1891) 

 142,248, of whom 131,015 were in the municipal 

 and county borough. Havelock was born at Ford 

 Hall, Bishopwearmoutli (1795); Jack Crawford, 

 the hero of Camperdown ( 1775-1831 ), at Sunder- 

 land ; and other natives were Clarkson Stanfield, 

 R.A., Tom Taylor, and Swan the electrician. 



Sunderland, ROBERT SPENCER, EARL OF, 

 was born in 1640, and in September 1643 succeeded 

 his father, who fell at the first battle of Newbury, 

 having three months before been created first earl. 

 After serving as ambassador to several courts, in 

 1679 he became Secretary of State, and at first 

 united with Essex and Halifax in opposing Shaftes- 

 bury, who wished to set Monmouth on the throne, 

 and favoured the exclusion of the Duke of York. 

 He encouraged Charles II. to persevere in the 

 degrading French alliance, and, with the Duchess 

 of Portsmouth, to whom he attached himself, 

 negotiated a treaty by which, in consideration of 

 an annual French pension, Charles was to assemble 

 no parliament for three years. Before the year was 

 out a new triumvirate, consisting of himself, Hyde, 

 and Godolphin, succeeded to the confidence of 

 Charles. The treaty with France was broken off, 

 and Sunderland, who was now afraid of the Whigs, 

 engaged the king in a more popular alliance with 

 Spain. After the dissolution of the last of the 

 exclusion parliaments lie lost his office ; but the 

 duchess remained faithful to him in disgrace, and 

 in 1682 he was, ' upon great submission made to the 

 Duke [of York], again restored to be Secretary.' 

 He remained in office until the accession of James 

 II., when his influence in the ministry became 

 greater than ever. Although there is reason to 

 believe he gave some encouragement to Monmouth 

 in his rebellion, he managed, with consummate 

 art, to win James's entire confidence, and in 1685 

 became prime-minister. He alone was entrusted 

 with a knowledge of the king's intention to estab- 

 lish Catholicism as the national church ; and in 

 1687 he privately conformed thereto, and after- 

 wards openly professed his conversion. His in- 

 fluence was so great that James would grant no 

 favour until he had asked the question : ' Have 



