- The Past and the Present What is perhaps the biggest challenge for social historians is to wrap our heads around the continuum of time: around the past and the present. We study the past even as we live in the present and we struggle to imagine what it was like when our ancestors walked the earth. Think about that for […]
- Carrington Solar Flare of 1859 In mid-August of 1859, astronomers were excited by the appearance of a large solar spot on the sun which first made its appearance on the 15th of the month. At the same time, there were five other large spots visible but these were insignificant when compared to the enormous spot that appeared as a notch […]
- The Women Went to Work While there is no doubt in my mind that our earliest female ancestors worked, and worked very hard, their choices for paid employment were few. Young women of the working class mostly went into service, working as domestic servants or farm servants. Widowed women with a family to support, might have taken in laundry, worked at dressmaking, hat making or […]
- Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics Centuries ago, ordinary people lived out their days, going about their daily business, and then ultimately died, all without anyone taking a great deal of notice of their existence, other than their families and those with whom they directly interacted. There was no master list of the population, no central registry of who was born, […]
- Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread 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 […]
- Eighteen Hundred and Froze To Death The summer of 1816 has been called ‘the summer that never was’, ‘the poverty year’ and ‘eighteen hundred and froze to death’. Temperatures that year fell around the world causing massive crop failures, killing livestock and creating calamitous food shortages. The unprecedented cold and violent storms were, many experts now agree, caused by severe volcanic […]
- Ticonderoga In July of 1851, Victoria’s first gold rush began and before the end of the year, gold fever had spread across Australia and beyond. Workers on Victoria’s sheep farms, lured by tales of gold, abandoned their posts and went in search of their fortunes. In an effort to fill the resulting labour shortage, Britain’s Emigration Commission was sponsoring emigrant families […]
- Spanish Influenza of 1918 Some believe that the Spanish Influenza of 1918 had its beginnings in the Far East, perhaps China, while others have suggested that it originated in Spain or Kansas or even in France but wherever it came from, it came quietly at first, touching here and there, then retreating once again until suddenly, it was everywhere, […]
- The Journals of Thomas Thistlewood Thomas Thistlewood inherited £200 sterling on the death of his father Robert in 1727 when he was but six years old although the bulk of the Thistlewood estate was left to Thomas’ elder brother John. And so it was that when he became of age, Thomas Thistlewood made the decision to leave England , anxious to seek adventure and […]
- Patent Medicines Patent medicines are not, as the name would suggest, medicines that have been patented but rather they are commercial products containing ‘secret ingredients’ that are sold directly to the public to cure a variety of diseases, aches and pains. Such commercial preparations grew in popularity during the nineteenth century at a time when medical care had […]