Topics are alphabetical

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

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Cumbrian and social history

Advertising

• 1910s

Alcohol

• gin, the Cumbrian connection
• drunkenness, the Georgian view
• beer prices in 1959 (and other drinks)

Animals

• Cute animals

Armstrong & Fleming, Penrith

Beds through the ages

Bicycle mania in 1869

Bonfire Night 1855

Border reivers

• Pacification document 06a

Burials – a Victorian public health risk

Carlisle Journal

• 1873 libel case

cartes de visite

Christmas

• in Victorian Penrith
• in 1843
• in 1854, in Carlisle
• changing customs
• Christmas Eve

Coats of arms/heraldry

Coronation Day 1838

Crime (see also punishments)

• affray and riots in Kingstown
• the Anne Crellin abduction
• the Longburn murders
• the Dearham riot
• Sarah Nicholson, sinner and victim
• William Horsley, victim of love
• Ann Atkinson, victim of serial poisoner Catherine Wilson
• Annie Robinson, poisoner
• the Seathwaite riot
• John Scott Brown aggravated assault
• 1826 murders

The Cumberland & Westmorland Herald

Cumbrian place names

Customs and Excise 

The Port Carlisle Dandy]

Deaths

• Death roll in Penrith, 1895

Diseases and medicine in Georgian times

• Georgian medicine

Diseases and cures in Victorian times

• Quack medicines and ‘miracle cures’
• Scarlet fever in the 1800s
• Consumption, a far from romantic disease
• Bonesetter, a family occupation
• electrotherapy
• mental health
• cholera and other 1830s epidemics

Easter

• Carlisle, 1803
• Palm Sunday

Education

• Brunswick Square school, Penrith
• Carlisle Central School
• The Popular Educator

Farming

• Fat stock and other prices in 1959
• notice to quit in 1857

Fashion

• in 1893

Fishing rights

Fire service

• FP signs

First World War

• – 1918 deaths
• Brunswick Square Penrith
• the Pilkington brothers
• mustard gas
• Tom Telford
• Prisoners of war
• food control (domestic rationing)
• High Hesket war memorial
• Thomas William Hetherington x2 (the Somme)
• Blackhall Camp/Lonsdale Battalion

Food and drink (alcohol: see A above)

• Food safety
• Frozen fish, a ‘Cumbrian discovery’
• Tea – a social history
• carlings (carlins)
• bread riots

Funerals

• The Bowness-on-Solway funeral bidder
• Victorian mourning

Furniture and furnishings

• A Georgian household

Graffiti – historic

• and more recent

Gravestones

Haaf net fishing at Port Carlisle

Humour

• Victorian
• and here

Industrial Revolution (the), and occupations

Inglewood Rifle Corps

Jacobites 1745

• Carlisle

Job titles old and new

Life expectancy in 1776 and 1845

Lodging houses and the spread of disease

Love –

• a breach of promise.
• and another
• dating advice in the 1840s
• Old maids and more 1840s advice
• near riot at a wedding

Maritime and shipping

• Solway ships in the 1800s

Martime tragedies

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

May Day

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

New Year’s Eve 1859-1867

Oil on troubled waters – a Cumbrian experiment

Pasche eggs – a Cumbrian tradition

Photographs: see cartes de visite

Poetry/poets

• Northern sky

Policing

• In the 1840s
• Carlisle Police, part one
• Carlisle Police (the Shaddongate riot) part two

Politics

• 1768 Lowther v Portland
• 1832 Reform Act (Reform Bill) and jubilee
• John Tweddle
• 1868 election riots 
• 1884 Reform Act

Postal service

• life of a Penrith postman
• Thursby Post Office

Poverty

• Starvation, in 1854

Public houses – see the places index page

Punishments

• in the 1700s
• in the mid-1800s
• in 1841
• the treadmill
• and values

Railways

• The Yanwath railway explosion
• the Yanwath railway hero
• railway time

Sanitation debated

• middens and rubbish
• Penrith Board of Health and the water closet furore

Science

• Astronomy and navigation

Second World War

• Merry Thought Camp, Ronald Foster

Shrove Tuesday customs

Slander in Stuart England

Slavery

• Robert Lowther

Sleeping arrangements in the 1800s

the Solway Artillery Range

Suicide – attitudes towards

superstitions

the telephone – an exciting discovery

Temperance theory

Theatre – Georgian

Thirlepolles – a mysterious ancient delicacy

Transport and travel

• For the Carlisle Canal and/or Carlisle to Port Carlisle railway, see the Places index page
• First motor cars
• Travel in the 1700s

Twelfth Night

• twelfth cakes
• striving for the holly

Unfortunate deaths – a few examples

Wages

• in 1843
• and 1844

Weather

• in 1822 and 1827
• in 1881
• rain in Cumbria (Ambleside poem)

Weavers (handloom)

Wedding customs in the 18th-19th centuries

Window tax or duty

Winter solstice, 1893

Workhouse life and food supplies

Wrestling (Cumberland and Westmorland)

• Kitty Cooper

Family history tips and advice

Assumptions, the danger of

Bankruptcy and family history resources

Census returns

Christian names and family history

Cumbrian surnames

• part one
• part two

Births and other records after 1837

Brick walls.

• The importance of trying name variations

Death certificates and their uses

Divorce and separation

DNA testing, a plain and simple guide

DNA testing – was it worth it?

DNA to ‘solve’ pre-1700s links

Fake ghost proves the importance of sound research

An unlikely ghost, according to research

Perils on online family trees

Elizabethan handwriting

Inquests

• deodands

Manor courts

Manor fines

Memorial inscriptions

Merchant Navy apprentices

Old occupations

• Bellman
• Bonesetter
• coach builder

Parish registers

• Kirkoswald
• Dalston

Patents

Piecing lives together from sources

Poor Relief 

Using multiple sources to piece together people’s stories

Suggested records (and their pitfalls)

Tracing fathers of illegitimate children

Wills and their uses for family history research

• and again
• unusual bequests