In this war, Denmark was neutral in a neutral alliance with Russia in charge. Russia alllied with france in an attempt to exclude England from European harbours, and therefor Denmark became an enemy to the British. The last week of March 1801, the British fleet approached Sjælland to attack Copenhagen (by the way - Mr. Nelson was onboard, but still vice-Admiral). Which way to sail was hard to decide: The shortest way was past the cannons of Kronborg, and the alternative was the other way around the island of Sjælland, with the risk of taking the ground in the shallows.
Since the distance from Elsinore to Sweden is 4 kilometres, it was possible to pass close to the Swedish coast, allmost out of gunrange from Kronborg. The British did so, and the guns of Kronborg did some heavy shooting, but the fleet was hard to hit. Meanwhile, the British ships were shooting back at Kronborg, but they were, of course, out of range too. A few cannonballs went ashore, one hitting the wall of a church, and another went down through the roof of, and damaging, the house of the British consulate.

April 2nd The battle in the roadsteads of Copenhagen took place. The Danish fleet was outnumbered by the well-trained British fleet, but the Danes made an outpost of gunbarges and cannonboats in a safe distance from Copenhagen. After some severe fighting, but still tie game, the British commander in chief, admiral Hyde Parker, signalled to Nelson to stop fighting. Nelson, aware that they could win, put the telescope to his blind eye, claiming that he couldn't see the signal, and continued fighting. A few hours later, the Danes surrendered. By the way - some of the best men on the Danish gunboats were from Elsinore.

March 31st 1857 was the last day in the era of the Sound Tolling. The documents and the cash books were sent to archives, the money sent to The Crown and most of the staff had found other jobs. April 1st, The custom-house agents had no customers. The custom house was empty, the guardhouse too. The world stopped. The ships didn't anchor in the roads (well, some did, ships still needed supplys).. The ferryboats to Sweden still sailed, and the steamboat to Copenhagen did too. And later that day (at 6:50 PM), the clock in the pediment of the custom house stopped.

One day, more than a year later, Mr. Sturzenbecker, a Swedish publicist, arrived from Sweden on his way to Copenhagen. He should go by the steamer at 7 o'clock, but a glance at the clock told him, that he had plenty of time, and he didn't get onboard in time. When complaining, he was told that everything in Elsinore had stopped. However, the problem was solved in a simple way: Instead of winding the clock every day, the stopped clock was set to 7 o'clock sharp. Now, travellers not aware of the problem, panted along towards the steamer, believing that they were too late.

Hygiene was different in the old days. The streets were filled with garbage, dirt and filth in a thick layer. This was before the invention of the garbage man (in Denmark called the rattleman; he swung the rattle, so people could hear him coming and they brought their garbage bins out on the street so he could empty them in his barrow.)

The 'nightman' emptied the toilet buckets, but he was one of the executioners assistents, a bad lot and undependable. If the buckets ran full, the citizens just emptied them in the street.

Reminds me of the call by the Marx Brothers: The garbage man is here! and the answer: Tell him we don't need anything today!

Elsinore has allways got foreigners among the citizens. The sound toll and the building of Kronborg made the town multinational. Especially during the blooming period (~1720-1800) wealth came to town. The ships, ancoring for clearance, bought supplys and inbound ships from the colonies sold parts of the cargo to the merchants in the town. They resold to ships heading elsewhere. All this made Elsinore a wealthy and well-known town, attracting merchants from most of Europe. Most of the new citizens were from England, Germany and The Netherlands. You can still see evidences from this; many houses in Elsinore are build in foreign styles.

In 1583, a Dutchman (Bernt Holländer) was not content with the street in front of his house; he wasn't used to that mess from Amsterdam. He started to clean up and shovel dirt away, but he was stoned out of town. An honest man is not allowed to do dishonest work.