Masulipatam being captured from the French by Colonel Forde, with a force sent by Lord Clive from Calcutta, the power of the English in the greater part of the district was complete.
KIT (1) (probably an adaptation of the Middle Dutch kitte,
a wooden tub, usually with a lid and handles; in modern Dutch
kit means a tankard), a tub, basket or pail used for holding milk,
butter, eggs, fish and other goods; also applied to similar receptacles
for various domestic purposes, or for holding a workman’s
tools, &c. By transference “kit” came to mean the tools themselves,
but more commonly personal effects such as clothing,
especially that of a soldier or sailor, the word including the knapsack
or other receptacle in which the effects are packed.
(2) The name (perhaps a corruption of “cittern” Gr. κιθάρα)
of a small violin, about 16 in. long, and played with a bow
of nearly the same length, much used at one time by dancing-masters.
The French name is pochette, the instrument being
small enough to go into the pocket.
KITAZATO, SHIBASABURO (1856– ), Japanese doctor of
medicine, was born at Kumamoto in 1856 and studied in
Germany under Koch from 1885 to 1891. He became one of the
foremost bacteriologists of the world, and enjoyed the credit of
having discovered the bacilli of tetanus, diphtheria and plague,
the last in conjunction with Dr Aoyama, who accompanied him
to Hong-Kong in 1894 during an epidemic at that place.
KIT-CAT CLUB, a club of Whig wits, painters, politicians
and men of letters, founded in London about 1703. The name
was derived from that of Christopher Cat, the keeper of the pie-house
in which the club met in Shire Lane, near Temple Bar.
The meetings were afterwards held at the Fountain tavern in
the Strand, and latterly in a room specially built for the purpose
at Barn Elms, the residence of the secretary, Jacob Tonson,
the publisher. In summer the club met at the Upper Flask,
Hampstead Heath. The club originally consisted of thirty-nine,
afterwards of forty-eight members, and included among others
the duke of Marlborough, Lords Halifax and Somers, Sir Robert
Walpole, Vanbrugh, Congreve, Steele and Addison. The portraits
of many of the members were painted by Sir Godfrey
Kneller, himself a member, of a uniform size suited to the height
of the Barn Elms room in which the club dined. The canvas,
36 × 28 in., admitted of less than a half-length portrait but
was sufficiently long to include a hand, and this is known as the
kit-cat size. The club was dissolved about 1720.
KITCHEN (O.E. cycene; this and other cognate forms, such as
Dutch keuken, Ger. Küche, Dan. kökken, Fr. cuisine, are formed
from the Low Lat. cucina, Lat. coquina, coquere, to cook), the
room or place in a house set apart for cooking, in which the
culinary and other domestic utensils are kept. The range or
cooking-stove fitted with boiler for hot water, oven and other
appliances, is often known as a “kitchener” (see Cookery and
Heating). Archaeologists have used the term “kitchen-midden,”
i.e. kitchen rubbish-heap (Danish kökken-mödding) for the rubbish
heaps of prehistoric man, containing bones, remains of edible shell-fish,
implements, &c. (see Shell-heaps). “Midden,” in Middle
English mydding, is a Scandinavian word, from myg, muck,
filth, and dyng, heap; the latter word gives the English “dung.”
KITCHENER, HORATIO HERBERT KITCHENER, Viscount (1850– ), British field marshal, was the son of Lieut.-Colonel
H. H. Kitchener and was born at Bally Longford, Co. Kerry,
on the 24th of June 1850. He entered the Royal Military
Academy, Woolwich, in 1868, and was commissioned second
lieutenant, Royal Engineers, in 1871. As a subaltern he
was employed in survey work in Cyprus and Palestine, and
on promotion to captain in 1883 was attached to the Egyptian
army, then in course of re-organization under British officers.
In the following year he served on the staff of the British expeditionary
force on the Nile, and was promoted successively major
and lieutenant-colonel by brevet for his services. From 1886 to
1888 he was commandant at Suakin, commanding and receiving
a severe wound in the action of Handub in 1888. In 1888 he
commanded a brigade in the actions of Gamaizieh and Toski.
From 1889 to 1892 he served as adjutant-general of the army.
He had become brevet-colonel in the British army in 1888, and
he received the C.B. in 1889 after the action of Toski. In 1892
Colonel Kitchener succeeded Sir Francis (Lord) Grenfell as sirdar
of the Egyptian army, and three years later, when he had completed
his predecessor’s work of re-organizing the forces of the
khedive, he began the formation of an expeditionary force on
the vexed military frontier of Wady Halfa. The advance into
the Sudan (see Egypt, Military Operations) was prepared by
thorough administrative work on his part which gained universal
admiration. In 1896 Kitchener won the action of Ferket
(June 7) and advanced the frontier and the railway to Dongola.
In 1897 Sir Archibald Hunter’s victory of Abu Hamed (Aug. 7)
carried the Egyptian flag one stage farther, and in 1898 the
resolve to destroy the Mahdi’s power was openly indicated by
the despatch of a British force to co-operate with the Egyptians.
The sirdar, who in 1896 became a British major-general and
received the K.C.B., commanded the united force, which stormed
the Mahdist zareba on the river Atbara on the 8th of April, and,
the outposts being soon afterwards advanced to Metemmeh and
Shendy, the British force was augmented to the strength of a
division for the final advance on Khartum. Kitchener’s work
was crowned and the power of the Mahdists utterly destroyed
by the victory of Omdurman (Sept. 2), for which he was raised
to the peerage as Baron Kitchener of Khartoum, received the
G.C.B., the thanks of parliament and a grant of £30,000. Little
more than a year afterwards, while still sirdar of the Egyptian
army, he was promoted lieutenant-general and appointed chief-of-staff
to Lord Roberts in the South African War (see Transvaal,
History). In this capacity he served in the campaign of
Paardeberg, the advance on Bloemfontein and the subsequent
northward advance to Pretoria, and on Lord Roberts’ return to
England in November 1900 succeeded him as commander-in-chief,
receiving at the same time the local rank of general. In
June 1902 the long and harassing war came to its close, and
Kitchener was rewarded by advancement to the dignity of
viscount, promotion to the substantive rank of general “for
distinguished service,” the thanks of parliament and a grant of
£50,000. He was also included in the Order of Merit.
Immediately after the peace he went to India as commander-in-chief in the East Indies, and in this position, which he held for seven years, he carried out not only many far-reaching administrative reforms but a complete re-organization and strategical redistribution of the British and native forces. On leaving India in 1909 he was promoted field marshal, and succeeded the duke of Connaught as commander-in-chief and high commissioner in the Mediterranean. This post, not of great importance in itself, was regarded as a virtual command of the colonial as distinct from the home and the Indian forces, and on his appointment Lord Kitchener (after a visit to Japan) undertook a tour of inspection of the forces of the empire, and went to Australia and New Zealand in order to assist in drawing up local schemes of defence. In this mission he was highly successful, and earned golden opinions. But soon after his return to England in April 1910 he declined to take up his Mediterranean appointment, owing to his dislike of its inadequate scope, and he was succeeded in June by Sir Ian Hamilton.
KITE,[1] the Falco milvus of Linnaeus and Milvus ictinus of
modern ornithologists, once probably the most familiar bird of
prey in Great Britain, and now one of the rarest. Three or four
hundred years ago foreigners were struck with its abundance in
the streets of London. It was doubtless the scavenger in ordinary
of that and other large towns (as kindred species now are in
Eastern lands), except where its place was taken by the raven;
for Sir Thomas Browne (c. 1662) wrote of the latter at Norwich—“in good plentie about the citty which makes so few kites to be
seen hereabout.” John Wolley has well remarked of the modern
Londoners that few “who see the paper toys hovering over the
parks in fine days of summer, have any idea that the bird from
which they derive their name used to float all day in hot weather
high over the heads of their ancestors.” Even at the beginning
of the 19th century the kite formed a feature of many
- ↑ In O.E. is cýta; no related word appears in cognate languages. Glede, cognate with “glide,” is also another English name.
