Breakfast Links: Week of April 3, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Women's lives in 1790s New York City: tales from the almshouse records.
• Jane Austen and one of the art world's most enduring mysteries.
• Myths of 18thc fashion: was it scandalous to show your ankles, elbows, decolletage?
• Portraits of 19thc African American women activists now available online.
• Fascinating history behind an 18thc portrait of three princesses from Mysore by Thomas Hickey, c1806, done to endorse smallpox vaccination.
• A journey through the Harlem Renaissance in maps, manuscripts, and art.
• Image: Army uniform for a carrier pigeon, 1939, National Army Museum.
• Why are so many surviving historical clothes so small?
• A skeleton city: Washington, DC in the 1820s.
• Miss Jenny Davis as a bride, c1780.
• How Charles Dickens fought to keep Shakespeare's house from dastardly American showman P.T.Barnum.
• The 18thc stone-swallower: two hundred pebbles in the stomach finally take their toll.
• Thinker, tailor, soldier, spy: the extraordinary women of Ghiyas-ud-din-Khalji's 15thc. harem.
• A 300-year-old recipe for Welsh Cakes.
• Image: Photo of a Victorian girl twinning with her doll
in matching bustle dress, c1880.
• Did Queen Elizabeth's virginals actually belong to Anne Boleyn?
• A labor of love? A vibrant crewel pocketbook from 1763.
• Vogue and virtuous virgins: a reflection on the history of the fashion magazine.
• The short but thrilling history of the Pony Express.
• A rare find: a tiny 17thc Shakespearean notepad.
• For Galentine's Day: a selection of favorite historical gal-pals.
• Photos from 1960-1970 of the vanishing shops of London's East End.
• Image: Photo of women workers for the fleet: the spinners of hemp for cables, c1902.
• "A republic...if you can keep it": the tale of a historical anecdote.
• Archaeologists dig up Philadelphia history beneath I-95.
• From grotesques to frumps: a field guide to spinsters in English literature.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection