Around the end of the Napoleonic War, there was a rich gentleman on business in the West Country. As he was rich, he stayed in a nice hotel. He liked a snack for his supper if he arrived back from business late in the evening . He particularly liked the local cheese known as Double… Continue reading Let them eat paint!
Month: December 2017
“Man of God, there is death in the pot!”
Ever wondered how an old timey cup of coffee tasted? What was it really like to take that first sip, on a day some hundreds of years before intensive farming methods, fancy new coffee plant varieties, modern methods of drying, roasting, grinding and so on? Well, wonder no more. Was it wonderful, like nothing you’ve… Continue reading “Man of God, there is death in the pot!”
“Died from excessive tobacco smoking”
Nearly 100 years before Sir Richard Doll’s proof that smoking and cancer were linked and way before the tobacco lobby cranked up its PR campaigns, a scientist in 1855 studying the adulterants and poisons that went into commonplace foods sold in England also looked at what went into tobacco. While he was describing the… Continue reading “Died from excessive tobacco smoking”
Brits have always hit the Yuletide bottle
The British malaise, getting publicly legless over the holidays, seemed like a recent phenomenon until I saw this from the New Year, 1865…
Those weren’t the days my friend
For the last act in an operatic tragedy that was real life in the 19th century read this story from March 1888 of a husband, a wife and a business failure. The welfare state was brought into being by stories such as this, in the same way that Factories Acts sought to stop workers dying… Continue reading Those weren’t the days my friend