Tag Archives: society

Good doctoring from 1808

Posted on July 17, 2018 by

A tale of an eminently practical solution to psychosomatic mental illness from August 1808. They did not call it the Age of Enlightenment for nothing…     Advertisements

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Injudicious and erroneous education

Posted on June 29, 2018 by

1837 -2018; Spot the difference.  I tend not to become exercised at the wilder fringes of this debate, but hey, give me a break — the discrimination in this photograph (below), is just wrong. But first, to set the context, … Continue reading →

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Between the lines

Posted on June 18, 2018 by

In 1864 a Cambridge gentleman farmer and agricultural scientist, Philip Howard Frere by name, wrote up his experiments in feeding various combinations of fodder. He shared with the readers of the Journal of the Bath and West of England Society … Continue reading →

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It’s the rich wot gets the pleasure

Posted on January 6, 2018 by

And the poor knew their place. This is the story from the Bow St Magistrate’s Court in 1862. It’s the tale of a cheapo toff who was embarrassed when a short-changed cabby chased him and shouted at him in the … Continue reading →

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Those weren’t the days my friend

Posted on December 6, 2017 by

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 … Continue reading →

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Body shaming is not new

Posted on September 1, 2017 by

A poignant tale from 1798…

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When science and religious cults collide

Posted on August 29, 2017 by

For good measure about the ‘climate change causes bad things… look, see it’s flooding, therefore it must be’ debate, and yes I know it’s from Breitbart, but it should give the more rabid and uninformed warmists just a teensy weensy … Continue reading →

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At the going down of the sun

Posted on July 31, 2017 by

World War One has been jogged back into the UK’s collective consciousness once more with the Third Battle of Ypres,aka Passchendaele getting its own Royal Command Performance on British TV. Two thoughts; one pretty much universal and the other pretty … Continue reading →

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Have our Romans already departed?

Posted on July 24, 2017 by

Ah, the Dark Ages. That period in British history after the Romans went away where everything just stopped, or seemingly so. It didn’t of course. The record petered out. The accepted wisdom is that because people built in wood, drank … Continue reading →

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To set the whole world ‘a-gadding’

Posted on June 20, 2017 by

You know nothing of progress if you do not know the 19th century. Let us think for a moment about railroads. Before they came, most rural Europeans lived and died within 20 miles of where they were born. Not because … Continue reading →

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