More real life from the 1880s as told to readers of the Little Cyclopedia of Common Things, (see a previous post for more about the book), brought to you this time by the letter P. Every one a winner for historical novelists. First up is a listing for Paint. There wasn’t much in paint then… Continue reading More from the Little Cyclopedia of Common Things
Catherine Foster; the trial
The morning the Lent Assizes opened in Bury St Edmunds on Saturday March 27th 1847, 17-year-old Catherine Foster, dressed in deep mourning and ‘evincing little alarm at the awful position she stood in’, replied in a firm voice “not guilty” to the charge of poisoning her husband. By ten past seven that evening, the prosecution… Continue reading Catherine Foster; the trial
Catherine Foster; the inquest
Just to recap (though it may assist you if you read this and the next couple of episodes by starting from the previous blog), the God-fearing young farm worker John Foster, a one-time neighbour o’mine, swallowed poison from his wife during dinner on Tuesday night November 17, 1846. Within minutes he was sick as a… Continue reading Catherine Foster; the inquest
5000 Spirits of a village, or the Layers of The Onion
Not a 100 yards from where I write this, in this sleepiest of sleepy Suffolk villages, a murder has been committed. The local paper, the East Anglian Daily Times, to which I am ever grateful for being a newspaper of the old school, wrote it up over Christmas. It would be churlish not to point… Continue reading 5000 Spirits of a village, or the Layers of The Onion
Wrapped up for Christmas, 1814
Treaty of Ghent, you say? Never heard of it? Probably because it concluded a pointless war that neither side really wished for and was subsequently ignored in European accounts of world history.
‘The air of cities is less pure — more people breathe it’
Glancing through my Little Cyclopædia of Common Things, I have to acknowledge once again it’s the small stuff of history that gets forgotten. The Little Cyclopædia is not so little, by the way, stretching to nearly 700 pages. Mine is the ninth edition, published in 1891, but the information comes from a decade before. Books… Continue reading ‘The air of cities is less pure — more people breathe it’
How to get attention; name your war after body parts
It’s an anniversary of sorts. It’s 200 years since the end of a war with a dull name and seven more years since the death that may have started it. The death was that of British Royal Navy sailor Jenkin Ratford. He was hanged from the yard arm. The circumstances of Ratford’s capture precipitated popular… Continue reading How to get attention; name your war after body parts
The night the Pope stole a baby
Child abduction is a terrible heart wrenching crime, pure and simple. You let the child out of sight for a second and your baby never comes back. At least one thing’s for sure. At home — right there in front of your eyes — they are safe.Well, that’s what Mr and Mrs Mortara thought, until… Continue reading The night the Pope stole a baby
“Useful present for a soldier”
Napoleon called the British a nation of shopkeepers. As the first Christmas of the 1914-18 war neared, those shopkeepers of Britain were concerned the country might be distracted from being a nation of customers. To remedy it for that year and throughout the war, much marketing effort was put into keeping the home tills ringing.… Continue reading “Useful present for a soldier”
Hunting for the bad, bad Benders
Not much is certain about the murderous Bender family except to say they were acknowledged to be America’s first serial killers — at least the first discovered. Were they a family? Probably not. Was Bender their real name? Almost certainly not. Even the number that they killed is uncertain. It was known to be around… Continue reading Hunting for the bad, bad Benders