Topics are alphabetical

Click on a link in the topics list to be taken to the relevant article

Cumbrian and social history

Advertising

• 1910s

Alcohol

• gin, the Cumbrian connection
• drunkenness, the Georgian view

Animals

• Cute animals

Bicycle mania in 1869

Burials – a Victorian public health risk

Christmas in Victorian Penrith

Coats of arms/heraldry

Crime

• see also punishments
• affray and riots in Kingstown

The Port Carlisle Dandy

Diseases and medicine in Georgian times

Diseases and cures in Victorian times

• Quack medicines and ‘miracle cures’
• Scarlet fever in the 1800s
• Consumption, a far from romantic disease

Education

• Brunswick Square school, Penrith

First World War

• – 1918 deaths
• Brunswick Square Penrith
• the Pilkington brothers
• mustard gas
• Tom Telford
• Prisoners of war

Food and drink (alcohol: see A above)

• Food safety
• Tea – a social history

Graffiti – historic

Haaf net fishing at Port Carlisle

Humour – Victorian

Industrial Revolution (the), and occupations

Job titles old and new

Life expectancy in 1776 and 1845

Lodging houses and the spread of disease

• Love – a breach of promise
• dating advice in the 1840s

Maritime tragedies

• the SS West Cumberland
• the brig Robert Burns
• in early 1813

Militia

• the American invasion of Whitehaven
• Wicked Jimmy Lowther and the Westmorland Militia

Carlisle Museum

Mining – Wellington Pit

Need-fire – a Celtic tradition

New Year traditions down the centuries

Oil on troubled waters – a Cumbrian experiment

Pasche eggs – a Cumbrian tradition

Politics

• John Tweddle
• 1868 election riots 

Punishments

• in the 1700s
• in the mid-1800s
• the treadmill
• and values

Railways

• The Yanwath railway explosion

Sanitation debated

• middens and rubbish

Science

• Astronomy and navigation

Slander in Stuart England

Slavery

• Robert Lowther

Suicide – attitudes towards

Temperance theory

Theatre – Georgian

Thirlepolles – a mysterious ancient delicacy

Travel in the 1700s

Twelfth Night and twelfth cakes

Unfortunate deaths – a few examples

Wages

• in 1843
• and 1844

Weather in 1881

Window tax or duty

Workhouse life and food supplies

Family history tips and advice

Assumptions, the danger of

Bankruptcy and family history resources

Cumbrian surnames

• part one
• part two

Death certificates and their uses

Fake ghost proves the importance of sound research

Perils on online family trees

Manor courts

Wills and their uses for family history research