Jemmy Wood the banker’s banker

He was not what you’d call a looker. In profile Jemmy Wood bore a passing resemblance to Mr Punch following a good lunch – but James Wood esq, ‘the eccentric banker, merchant and draper’ of the city of Gloucester, England who died aged 80 on this day in 1836,  in his old house above the shop… Continue reading Jemmy Wood the banker’s banker

The final act in Drama

Here’s one you may have missed. Firstly, it might make you smile that there is a town of 44,000 people in north eastern Greece where it meets Bulgaria called Drama. The story is a poignant Easter/Passover one of loss, isolation and a hint that maybe all religions are simply, at the end of it, one religion. It’s… Continue reading The final act in Drama

Off with his ankle!

If you recently ate a meal that you’d rather not see back again, look away now. I say that because we are about to closely examine the festering old wound of Italian resistance partisan Giuseppe Garibaldi. The look-see at what this poor man went through says a lot about the stoicism of our forebears facing… Continue reading Off with his ankle!

This takes all the biscotti

From a British daily that once was listed in the realm of ‘quality newspapers’ but has descended the slippery slope of clickbait, The Daily Telegraph, today comes this howl-at-the-moon mad piece of over-interpretation of archaeology based on an agenda. We have previously ventured into noting that everything that ended up in a river or a ditch must have had… Continue reading This takes all the biscotti

“She rode to town on her own horse”

Just a further thought on the “scandalous practice of wife selling” from the previous story. This idea of an auction was not any brutalising suttee of a marriage where women were subjugated by gnarly unreconstructed men who had tired of the old model. In case there was any doubt of the amicable and liberated relationship between the… Continue reading “She rode to town on her own horse”

The end of an un-civil partnership

A note of a dubious anniversary from Robert Chambers, writing in his 1869 Book of Days, though history is full of these quasi-divorces throughout the 19th century. Usually they were surprisingly amicable affairs based on village common sense when a marriage had failed and separation in law was only for the rich… The Annual Register for… Continue reading The end of an un-civil partnership

Sanderson at the Langham Hotel

The Civil War was a memory. In the first five years after the war’s end many of carpetbaggers and scalawags had been found out by resentful losers reposed in the Southern States and so some of those northern infiltrators and Southern turncoats, high on quick riches and low on moral self worth redirected their attention… Continue reading Sanderson at the Langham Hotel

Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble

Rome, that is to say ancient Rome “fell”. Every schoolkid knows that. But a thought occurs to me. Was it the hordes of heathens knocking at the gate that told Romans, in a manner not unlike Nicholson in The Shining that “Here’s Gothy…!” as they chopped their way through that gate? Or were there subtler tides that… Continue reading Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble

Three paragraphs

Not as bad as the 1868 earthquake and tsunamis where 25,000 died, but still pretty serious. This is an example of how the God-fearing 19th century took on board a natural disaster without the handwringing cliché-ridden sentimentalism with which 24 hour news has sensitised the world. This June 30 1877 report is from a provincial paper in the… Continue reading Three paragraphs