Before online dating websites like Tinder or Match.com, how did our lonely ancestors find love? They placed advertisements in Matrimonial Journals, in newspapers and sometimes even wrote away to officials in far away places looking for bargain brides. Matrimonial Journals Published in Toronto, the Anglo-American Matrimonial Journal took advertisements from lonely men and women looking for […]

The Staff of Life For labourers in the nineteenth century, bread was indeed the staff of life. For the very poor, it was often all they could afford and sometimes even more than they could afford. From 1793 when Britain became involved in the French Wars (1793-1815), the price of bread increased so dramatically that many […]

On 24 February 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued a papal bull or charter that began with the words Inter gravissimas 1Translation: ‘Among the gravest…’ to reform the Julian calendar then in common use in Europe so that the seasonal events that were used to calculate Easter would be back in their proper places. The Julian calendar […]

Etiquette for Ladies Victorian ladies should consider the introduction of one acquaintance to another a matter of serious responsibility. When introducing a gentleman and a woman, the gentleman should always be introduced to the lady and never the other way around, and never with asking the lady for her permission first. The lady, so introduced, should never […]

When Charles I first introduced public mail service in 1635, letters were carried from one ‘post’ to the next ‘post’ by carriers on foot or on horseback. Up until that time, the post system was reserved for the use of the King and his Court. At each ‘post’ the ‘postmaster’ would remove the letters for […]