Category Archives: History

London Bridge is falling down, and going back up, and falling down again, and being rebuilt, and burning down, and…

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A link on the Two Nerdy History Girls blog led me to Hidden London, a website replete with interesting articles highlighting little-known sites and facts about London. On this website, I learned about an almost impossibly ancient organization that many Londoners unknowingly interact with every day.

There has been a bridge across the Thames at the present site of London Bridge since the time of the Roman occupation. The bridge was such a crucial transportation link between the Roman roads to the north with the routes heading southward that a small trading post that sprung up on the north side of the bridge grew to become the Roman city of Londinium—the beginnings of the City of London. (Yes, London Bridge is older than London!) Continue reading →

The Spitalfields Nippers

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A link to a Daily Mail Online article about a set of photographs that were taken in the decades surrounding 1900 showing the heartbreaking state of the children of the poor inhabitants of Spitalfields in East London. The photographer was Horace Warner, a Quaker working in the East End to fight poverty and hunger.  Some of his photographs were used to highlight the plight of the poor; most were stored away until now.

Adelaide Springett was so ashamed of her tattered boots, she took them off for this 1901 photograph. Source: Daily Mail website (link above).

Adelaide Springett was so ashamed of her tattered boots, she took them off for this 1901 photograph. Source: Daily Mail website (link above).

Those of us enamored by the Victorian Period or its revival movement, Steampunk, often forget that it was not all tea parties and polished brass doorknobs.  Not everyone had a country manor or took the “Grand Tour” through Europe to finish one’s education. The orphanages and workhouses were full, and not with the happy, singing orphans of “Oliver!” either.

One UK Victorian reenacting group that I’ve learned off, “The Ragged Victorians” strive to recreate the squalid, the poor, “The great unwashed”, as their website describes it.  We should not forget this aspect of Victorian life as we celebrate the happier side.

Graphical Guide to Cemetery Symbolism

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The purported grave of Mother Goose, Granary Burying Ground, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Source: Wikipedia user Swampyank.

The purported grave of Mother Goose, Granary Burying Ground, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Source: Wikipedia user Swampyank.

From Altas Obscura, a guide to the symbolism found in graveyards–apropos for Halloween.

Growing up near Boston, I sometimes wandered the burying grounds in Boston where the stones date back to the founding of Boston.  Many of the colonial era graves have intricate carvings which are still crisp and sharp.  Death, the winged skull, the winged hourglass (Tempus Fugit!) and the draped urn are all symbols of death that can be seen there.

And this was all before the excess decoration of the Victorian Era.

“Bicycle Face” and the Suffrage Movement

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Bicyclist wearing practical bloomers. (Still looks like she's wearing a corset though.)

Bicyclist wearing practical bloomers. (Still looks like she’s wearing a corset though.)

Below is a link to an interesting article about how the Bicycle Craze of the 1890s became interwoven with the women’s suffrage movement.  While high-wheeled “penny farthing” bicycles were ridden mainly by men, the adoption of the safety bicycle in the late 1880s popularized bicycling by women.  Suddenly, the bicycle enabled women to leave the home, and get exercise in the outdoors.  Continue reading →

Steampunk Beauty?

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CerdaThe portrait above is of Doña Ana de Mendoza, the Princess of Éboli, a 16th century Spanish noblewoman.

Born into the tempestuous house of Mendoza in 1540 (apparently her father was an infamous philanderer), she has been described as passionate, intelligent, religious, and rebellious in her youth.  The story goes that she lost her right eye in an accident while fencing with a page when she was 12 years old.  There is some controversy about the exact nature of her injury and whether it was caused through fencing.  A very in depth biography of Doña Ana and her ophthalmologic details is here (on a fencing club website!).  Despite the eyepatch that she wore the rest of her life, she was known as one of the foremost beauties of the court.

Married off at age 13 to Ruy Gómez de Silva, a courtier 24 years her senior, the marriage was apparently not consummated for several years due to his travels with King Philip II of Spain.  Her husband apparently stayed around after that as she eventually bore 10 children.  Upon her husband’s death in 1573, she entered a convent for a couple of years, apparently not getting along well with the other nuns, which prompted her leaving.

She returned to court and all its intrigues which she promptly became caught up in.  She was widely known to have had a relationship with Antonio Perez, a secretary to Philip II.  Was it a romantic, or merely a political, relationship?  There were rumors of a dalliance with the King himself, accusations of a conspiracy to murder, and claims of betraying state secrets. She was eventually sentenced, and died after spending her last 13 years in prison.

Still, what a model for a steampunk heroine!  Did she really lose her eye in a fencing accident, or was she a time-traveler saving 16th century Spain from airpirates from the future?  Her intelligence and rebellious nature make her the perfect ahead-of-her-time princess battling with her army of warriors crafted with cursed Aztec gold for the right to be equal to the pompous male courtiers who surrounded her, only to be thwarted at the end.

Historical figures like Doña Ana are grist for the mill of imagination!

Thanks to the Two Nerdy History Girls website for posting a link to Doña Ana’s portrait and inspiring my imagination.

The Poetry of Scientists

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An interesting insight into a seldom-seen facet of Victorian Scientists. Who knew John Tyndall was a poet?

drgregorytate's avatarGregory Tate

On shelf after shelf of carefully catalogued notebooks and sheets of paper, the archives of the Royal Institution in London store the voluminous manuscript writings of nineteenth-century scientific pioneers such as Humphry Davy and John Tyndall. Among these manuscripts are a surprising number of poems, painstakingly drafted, revised, copied out, and reworked. I’ve been working in the Royal Institution’s archives recently, researching both for my second academic monograph and for a documentary, ‘The Poetry of Science’, which will be broadcast as part of BBC Radio 3’s Sunday Feature on Sunday 2 November. I’ve been trying to figure out why nineteenth-century scientists (Davy, Tyndall, William Whewell, John Herschel, James Clerk Maxwell) were so interested in writing poetry. The copious crossings-out and emendations in the Royal Institution manuscripts indicate that Davy and Tyndall took care and time over their poems, editing and polishing them; poetry wasn’t simply a recreation. But why…

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The Berners Street Hoax

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History tends to lack a sense of humor.  Rarely does one come across a real side-splitting tale amongst the social trends and political machinations that underlie the dates of important treaties and the names of the monarchs that signed them (usually Charles or Frederick, according to my son who studied European History last year).

"The Berners Street Hoax" from The Choice Humorous Works of Theodore Hook

“The Berners Street Hoax” from The Choice Humorous Works of Theodore Hook

In 1810, on November 26th to be exact, one singular event occurred in London which could win the award for funniest historical event (a low bar there…) Continue reading →