Saturday, September 20, 2014

Breakfast Links: Week of September 15, 2014

Saturday, September 20, 2014
For your weekend reading pleasure - our weekly round-up of our fav links to other websites, blogs, images, and articles, collected via Twitter.
• "The make of his shoulders pleases me vastly": eight ill-advised reasons for getting married, 1792.
• King Silence: the lives of Victorian deaf children.
• When is a London street not a street?
• "Nothing exists but Thoughts!" the literature of laughing gas.
• Abandoned medieval villages seen from the air - and what they can teach us.
Keeping clean in the 18th c.
• Fashion styles & men's suit silhouettes in the 1930s.
Image: A World War One signature quilt, c1915; money collected from the signatures went to the UK's war effort.
• The Chinese Festival and the 1754 Riot at Drury Lane Theatre.
• The legendary ex-pats of Tangiers and their colorful homes.
• A sumptuous embellished "going away" dress for an 1870s bride.
Image: Removing the mat on this old photo reveals the lovely hidden 19th c. woman, unseen since the day of framing.
• Jack the Clipper - plus a rare Jacqueline: stealing hair for fun or profit.
• "Do take me to see the Pictures again": 1910s photo postcards show romantic possibilities of a visit to early cinema.
• Procuring pepper, a most important spice in early trading.
Video: making 18th c style mushroom ketchup.
• How to entertain with impromptu fruit sculpture, 1906.
Image: Dramatic lighting gives sculptural effect to an 1870 corset.
• Dog Days of summer with painter Mary Cassatt.
• The women behind one of the world's first computers.
• Beautiful embroidered dress given to Queen Victoria in the 1850s.
• Seventeenth-century spot sampler embroidered by daughters of Henry Chichester of Arlington, Devon.
• The world's oldest beehive discovered in a Scottish chapel.
Sophia Baddeley, 18th c courtesan, actress, and A-list celebrity.
• The black Victorians: astonishing portraits unseen for 120 years.
• "They glory in their infamy"; who else but pirates?
Image: 1838-1842 American cotton petticoat and chemise with eyelet borders.
• The myth of brushing your hair 100 times at night - or is it?
• Leggy ladies: 18th c attitudes towards legs.
• The British painters who were witness to World War Two.
• Stephen King has named his most hated expressions. What are yours?
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3 comments:

Gigi said...

Unrelated to Friday's Links, but, possibly you could shed some light on something that has been bothering me.
When a person attended a ball how were the belongings that were checked in the cloakroom organized? Did the man or women walk away with some type of ticket or was there a designated spot for hats, etc... for each person who RSVP'd?
(I'm picturing the scene in "Age of Innocence" where gentlemen picked up gloves from a table and each pair had a name listed by them.)
This is really not important to the plot of any story but I think about the hundereds of people attending a function and shake my head at the organization put into just this asspect of the event. Thanks for any imput!

nightsmusic said...

Wonderful links this week! I especially liked the bathing link as my dad until he died, never did anything but a sponge bath. Standing under running water was so wasteful to him and he refused to sit in his own dirt in the tub. Of course, some of this has to do with the fact that growing up, he used to be the one who had to fetch the water from the community well in the middle of town...

Isabella Bradford/Susan Holloway Scott said...

Nightsmusic, glad you enjoyed this week's links! And if the Two Nerdy History Girls can help people understand only one thing about their ancestors, let it be this: JUST BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T TAKE A BATH OR SHOWER EVERY DAY DIDN'T MEAN YOU WERE DIRTY. Thanks for backing us up with the wonderful anecdote about your father. :)

Gigi, I honestly don't know about how belongings were checked at large balls. Loretta and I were recently discussing exactly this in relation to the Duchess of Richmond's ball the night before the Battle of Waterloo, and wondering how all those officers and soldiers collected their hats, etc. so swiftly.

Does anyone else know the answer? Was their an early version of the "hat check girl" at large balls in the 18th-19th c.? I can't quite believe only the honor system was in effect in those ladies' cloakrooms....:

 
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