Posted By Kate on January 16, 2010
Just spotted the Devil’s Whore on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it it’s well worth a look! There are a number of historical inaccuracies in the series, but it does give a good overview of the lives of women during the Civil War.
ps: I wrote a short review of the series which you can find here.
Posted By Tess on January 14, 2010
Image from Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management
Hi, I’m Tess, this is my first post here. Kate asked me to join in to share my love of all things culinary, I’m very new to blogging so please be gentle.
It’s impossible to discuss cookery in a historical context without mentioning Mrs Beeton. Her Book of Household Management is still a best-seller, even if most people tend not to follow the recipes. It’s actually not a cookery book as such, it’s far more comprehensive and covers all aspects of household management as the title suggests. Obviously, the house that was being managed was unlikely to be that of ordinary people, this was a tome aimed very much at the middle and upper classes who could afford a small army of staff to keep them in the style to which they had become accustomed.
Despite, or perhaps because of, this, it does give an interesting insight into social history, and with that in mind, my first post highlights the way our diets and purchasing options have changed. We now take it for granted that we can, for example, buy fresh strawberries at Christmas, but that wasn’t always the case.
This extract from The Book of Household Management lists what would have been available in January … assuming you were wealthy enough to afford them.
JANUARY.
FISH.—Barbel, brill, carp, cod, crabs, crayfish, dace, eels, flounders, haddocks, herrings, lampreys, lobsters, mussels, oysters, perch, pike, plaice, prawns, shrimps, skate, smelts, soles, sprats, sturgeon, tench, thornback, turbot, whitings.
MEAT.—Beef, house lamb, mutton, pork, veal, venison.
POULTRY.—Capons, fowls, tame pigeons, pullets, rabbits, turkeys.
GAME.—Grouse, hares, partridges, pheasants, snipe, wild-fowl, woodcock.
VEGETABLES.—Beetroot, broccoli, cabbages, carrots, celery, chervil, cresses, cucumbers (forced), endive, lettuces, parsnips, potatoes, savoys, spinach, turnips,—various herbs.
FRUIT.—Apples, grapes, medlars, nuts, oranges, pears, walnuts, crystallized preserves (foreign), dried fruits, such as almonds and raisins; French and Spanish plums; prunes, figs, dates.
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Posted By Kate on January 13, 2010
Updated to add: I can’t get the video to appear here, so if you aren’t seeing it, here is the link.
I found this video highlighting the work of the suffragette movement over on YouTube. I know their efforts are often dismissed nowadays, and it is true that the combined effort of women in World War 1 probably did play a bigger part in them winning the right to vote, but I still think the suffragettes were admirable and they certainly focused national attention on to the issue of womens’ suffrage. We owe them a lot!
This video sadly isn’t embeddable, but it gives a more detailed look at the suffragette movement, and the music (Aretha Franklyn) is pretty funky.
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Posted By Kate on January 10, 2010
You’re probably familiar with scenes in historical dramas in which a character becomes ill and is then ‘bled’ by a physician. You’ve also probably wondered quite what that was supposed to achieve; nowadays, the idea of inflicting a further injury on an already sick person seems a bit bizarre. However, a few centuries go it all made perfect sense.
Up until the 18th – 19th centuries, medicine was strongly influenced by ancient Greek and Roman teachings, which included the concept of ‘humours’. The humours were black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood, and it was believed these four elements were present in every human being. If a person was healthy, then their humours were in balance; if they fell ill, it was because their humours were imbalanced. Bleeding, either with leeches or through a deliberate wound, was the cure if the patient was found to have too much blood.
These practices continued for centuries, despite their inefficacy and were only supplanted with the advent of more modern medicine – which ironically probably drew more on folk medicine, at least in terms of new drug treatments, than anything which was advocated by previous generations of the medical profession.
Further reading:
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Posted By Kate on December 29, 2009
Just a quick post to let you know, the full series of The 1900 House is available to watch on the 4OD channel on YouTube. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth a look. It’s a kind of social experiment, which involves a modern family living as people did in 1900, hence the title. Fascinating to watch, but a reminder of how much easier life is with labour saving devices and modern medicine.
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Posted By Kate on September 27, 2009
I had a theme in mind for this first post, but due to a series of irritating technical problems, setting up the blog took rather longer than I expected. So, I decided to focus on women for whom technology was also an interest, and highlight some interesting 19th century scientists.
Caroline Herschel, German astronomer and discoverer of comets
Portrait of Dr Elizabeth Garret Anderson, first British woman to qualify as a doctor
Ada Byron aka Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer prgrammer
