Regarding the Great Exhibition of 1851 :  “A specially strong opponent… was Colonel Sibthorp, M.P. for Lincoln, ‘a man of limited intelligence and bigoted views’. He dubbed the scheme ‘an exhibition of the trumpery and trash of foreigners who had no business to be here at all; and he offered a heartfelt prayer that Providence would think fit to destroy the impious project by a visitation of lightning’… ‘He had,’ he solemnly declared, ‘never set foot in this so-called Crystal Palace; and he considered it his duty to his fellow-creatures not to go into the place on any pretext. The very thought of it positively sickened him’.”

Horace Wyndham, This Was The News : An Anthology Of Victorian Affairs (1948)