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
Tag: social history
“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
Your seed catalogue for 1797 has arrived
Fresh off the ship from England, five, yes count them, five, different varieties of asparagus seed and 23 different melon varieties. Things weren’t so bad in Philadelphia after the war as long as you could feast on 13 different kinds of radish, or 26 different cabbages. For the previous year’s catalogue in full go to… Continue reading Your seed catalogue for 1797 has arrived
(I do not) Want Ad
You did not want to mess with this lady, Mrs Nancy Turtle. She surely believed in the power of advertising, though her forgiveable spluttering volcano of anger could have been phrased better, this stream of consciousness rant paints a perfect picture of her lantern-jawed, one-eyed philanderer excuse for a husband
Is there a rack where disused words are hung?
Is there a rack where disused words are hung like lost umbrellas, waiting for someone to claim and recycle them? Here’s a verb: to glimm. Sadly I am either much too young or much too old to ever utter it, but my unanswerable question is how it came to mean two totally diametrically opposed actions… Continue reading Is there a rack where disused words are hung?
Zebras in harness
This is the main attraction. This was the story that first stopped me in my tracks taken from that page of The Graphic published that August Saturday 119 years ago. I was distracted by so many other stories on that page and that led me to share with you the pheasant plucking book, the death… Continue reading Zebras in harness