Category: social history
Attitudes to suicide down the centuries
Attitudes to suicide is a tricky topic to cover. I have seen the impact it can have on those ‘left behind,’ and witnessed reactions and attitudes in modern Britain. This piece on attitudes to su... Read More
Twelfth Night – and twelfth cakes
Twelfth Night these days just means ‘time to take down the Christmas decorations’ – and a Shakespeare play – right? Well perhaps, but it used to mean a lot more. Twelfth cakes It is st... Read More
New Year traditions: ginger and coal
New Year traditions in today’s UK tend to go like this: people crowd into pubs/parties; drink too much; sing an obscure Scottish poem while linking arms; shout out the numbers 10 to one backwards; s... Read More
Quack medicines and ‘miracle cures’
A further look at the discomforting world of Victorian ‘cures’ for illness In July 1863, a former Carlisle weaver named Thomas Hetherington was fined £5 by magistrates in Hartlepool for selling q... Read More
Bankruptcy: a boon for family historians
Bankruptcy in the family may mean you weren’t born into luxury, but it does mean there’s a wealth of information to look for, tracing your ancestors. In the late 1780s, a man named George Fawell, ... Read More
Haaf net fishing at Port Carlisle
No book on the overall story of Port Carlisle would be complete without a mention of haaf net fishing. As I write this, it is possible for visitors to have a go, courtesy of the Highland Laddie Inn at... Read More
Scarlet fever in the 1800s
Scarlet fever in the 1800s was a common disease among children – and a deadly one. And sadly, cleanliness and ventilation were either a luxury for poorer households, or maybe not appreciated as impo... Read More
Cumbrian lodging houses – dens of disease
If you imagine Cumbrian lodging houses in the 1800s were in any way better than those in the big industrial cities elsewhere in England, you’d be wrong. Conditions for those forced to live in th... Read More