(F. W. M.)
BRADAWL (from “brad,” a flat nail, and “awl,” a piercing tool), a small tool used for boring holes (see [Tool]).
BRADDOCK, EDWARD (1695?-1755), British general, was born in Perthshire, Scotland, about 1695. He was the son of Major-General Edward Braddock (d. 1725), and joined the Coldstream Guards in 1710. In 1747 as a lieutenant-colonel he served under the prince of Orange in Holland during the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. In 1753 he was given the colonelcy of the 14th foot, and in 1754 he became a major-general. Being appointed shortly afterwards to command against the French in America, he landed in Virginia in February 1755. After some months of preparation, in which he was hampered by administrative confusion and want of resources, he took the field with a picked column, in which George Washington served as a volunteer officer, intended to attack Fort Duquesne (Pittsburg, Pa.). The column crossed the Monongahela river on the 9th of July and almost immediately afterwards fell into an ambuscade of French and Indians. The troops were completely surprised and routed, and Braddock, rallying his men time after time, fell at last mortally wounded. He was carried off the field with difficulty, and died on the 13th. He was buried at Great Meadows, where the remnant of the column halted on its retreat to reorganize. (See [Seven Years’ War].)
BRADDOCK, a borough of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., on the Monongahela river, 10 m. S.E. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890) 8561; (1900) 15,654, of whom 5111 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 19,357. Braddock is served by the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Pittsburg & Lake Erie railways. Its chief industry is the manufacture of steel—especially steel rails; among its other manufactures are pig-iron, wire rods, wire nails, wire bale ties, lead pipe, brass and electric signs, cement and plaster. In 1905 the value of the borough’s factory products was $4,199,079. Braddock has a Carnegie library. Kennywood Park, near by, is a popular resort. The municipality owns and operates the water-works. Braddock was named in honour of the English general Edward Braddock, who in 1755 met defeat and death near the site of the present borough at the hands of a force of French and Indians. The borough was first settled at the close of the 18th century, and was incorporated in 1867.
BRADDON, MARY ELIZABETH (1837- ), English novelist, daughter of Henry Braddon, solicitor, of Skirdon Lodge, Cornwall, and sister of Sir Edward Braddon, prime minister of Tasmania, was born in London in 1837. She began at an early age to contribute to periodicals, and in 1861 produced her first novel, The Trail of the Serpent. In the same year appeared Garibaldi, accompanied by Olivia, and other poems, chiefly narrative, a volume of extremely spirited verse, deserving more notice than it has received. In 1862 her reputation as a novelist was made by a favourable review in The Times of Lady Audley’s Secret. Aurora Floyd, a novel with a strong affinity to Madame Bovary, followed, and achieved equal success. Its immediate successors, Eleanor’s Victory, John Marchmont’s Legacy, Henry Dunbar, remain with her former works the best-known of her novels, but all her numerous books have found a large and appreciative public. They give, indeed, the great body of readers of fiction exactly what they require; melodramatic in plot and character, conventional in their views of life, they are yet distinguished by constructive skill and opulence of invention. For a considerable time Miss Braddon conducted Belgravia, in which several of her novels appeared. In 1874 she married Mr John Maxwell, publisher, her son, W.B. Maxwell, afterwards becoming known as a clever novelist and newspaper correspondent.