Breakfast Links: Week of January 19, 2015

For your weekend reading - our weekly round-up of fav links to other blogs, websites, articles, and images, collected via Twitter.
• Fascinating long read: the lives of an 18th c. gentleman's coat.
• Stunning first photo of a large crowd: 1848 Great Chartist Ralley.
• "Ladies made happy": Victorian "parlor ladies" and their crochet.
• Street names of London: Prudence and whalebones.
• Holding the private and state apartments for the royal family: the Fountain Court at Hampton Court.
• Slut-shaming, eugenics, and Donald Duck: the scandalous history of sex-ed movies.
• Image: Global moment: Fan depicting Empress of China, Wanpoa, 1784, welcomed by French, English, Dutch , and Chinese officials.
• A few words about the codpiece (and the Wolf Hall codpiece controversy.)
• Raymond Yard's whimsical 1930s jewel-covered rabbits, dressed as waiters.
• The "horrid lash": why the 19th c. army liked flogging, and the public hated it.
• "Rhythmical Essays on the Beard Question": beard haters in the 1860s.
• Thomas Vyse, 19th c. straw hatter maker.
• Knitting pattern for steering gloves, 1915, for trawler-men on minesweeping duties.
• What opportunities did the 19th c. American West offer women versus back East?
• Edward II and his favorites.
• The curious case of Adam Ranier, the only man known to have been both a dwarf and a giant.
• Is this Henry VIII's hat?
• Image: Night Fete at Olevano by James Baker Pyne 1853-4. Painted in Rome.
• Painstaking work on a 19th c. sailor's wool coat from shipwreck of Civil War ship Monitor.
• Ahh, that smell! Whatever became of ditto machines?
• Mrs. Bouverie and Mrs. Crewe: two Whig hostesses from the 18th c.
• "It was a wretched end to a vivid life...." The death in Calais of Emma, Lady Hamilton.
• Image: The Duke of Devonshire taking a nap in the Lower Library at Chatsworth, Derbyshire, c 1995.
• Fan presented by Prince Albert to Queen Victoria on her 39th birthday, May 1858.
• An atlas in cloth: Captain Cook's rarely seen fabric book.
• Walking on the bottom of the Regent's Canal.
• Edwardian sexual codes and why the lovers of Downton Abbey become more passionate with age.
• Guided by voices: architecture designed for ghosts and the spirit world.
• Dress code: the history of "business casual."
• Image: Striking court dress is made from Egyptian silk brocaded in gold and silver, 1801.
• A few winter hats, plus artists Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt.
• Surprising chart: which country in the world has highest percentage of women representatives in government? (Hint: the UK is #60 on the list, the US #75)
• Charlotte Bonaparte, Napoleon's artistic niece.
• How the British governed India in the 19th c. from a West End hotel.
• One London mansion, many layers of history: 3 Savile Row.
• Image: Victorian-style catfight, 1890: "I hope you're not so tired as you look."
• Just for fun, thanks (of course) to The Onion: Nation's historians warn that the past is expanding at an alarming rate.
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