Isabella Bradford's Blog, page 39

From the Archives: Victorian Street Sweeping Machine

Frith, The Crossing Sweeper, 1853 Loretta reports:

We take clean streets more or less for granted.  Litter and dog poo are nothing to what our early 19th century ancestors encountered.  Crossing sweeps pushed brooms, and pedestrians were supposed to pay for a clear path. By the late 1830s, with the filth worsening, inventors set about developing mechanical, albeit horse-driven, methods of cleaning streets.  Mr. Whitworth gets credit for the first mechanical sweeper, but by 1843, when his machines were put to work in London, other inventors (scroll down) were applying for patents for similar devices or “improvements.”

WHITWORTH'S PATENT SWEEPING MACHINE.This machine, lately brought into operation in the town of Manchester, where it excited a considerable deal of public attention, has lately been introduced into the metropolis, and is now employed in cleaning Regent-street. It is the invention of Mr. Whitworth, of the firm of Messrs. Whitworth and Co., of Manchester, engineers, by whom it has been patented. The principle of the invention consists in employing the rotary motion of locomotive wheels, moved by horse or other power, to raise the loose soil from the surface of the ground and deposit it in a vehicle attached. The apparatus for this purpose is simple in its construction; it consists of a series of brooms (3 ft. wide) suspended from a light frame of wrought iron, hung behind a cart, the body of which is placed near the ground, for greater facility in loading. The draught is easy for two horses, and throughout the process of filling, scarcely a larger amount of force is required than would be necessary to draw the full cart an equal distance.
…
Two machines are advantageously worked together, one a little in advance of the other. Not only is the operation of cleansing a particular street thus effected more rapidly, but the two drivers can occasionally assist each other, and one of them (at higher wages) may exercise a supervision over both machines.
The success of the operation is no less remarkable than its novelty. Proceeding at a moderate speed through the public streets, the cart leaves behind it a well swept tract, which forms a striking contrast with the adjacent ground. Though of the full size of a common cart, it has repeatedly filled itself in the space of six minutes from the principal thoroughfares of Manchester. This fact, while it proves the efficiency of the new apparatus, proves also the necessity of a change in the present system of street cleaning.
— The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal , Volume 6, 1843

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Breakfast Links: Week of April 3, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Women's lives in 1790s New York City: tales from the almshouse records.
• Jane Austen and one of the art world's most enduring mysteries.
• Myths of 18thc fashion : was it scandalous to show your ankles, elbows, decolletage?
• Portraits of 19thc African American women activists now available online.
• Fascinating history behind an 18thc portrait of three princesses from Mysore by Thomas Hickey, c1806, done to endorse smallpox vaccination.
• A journey through the Harlem Renaissance in maps, manuscripts, and art.
• Image: Army uniform for a carrier pigeon , 1939, National Army Museum.
• Why are so many surviving historical clothes so small?
• A skeleton city: Washington, DC in the 1820s.
• Miss Jenny Davis as a bride, c1780.
• How Charles Dickens fought to keep Shakespeare's house from dastardly American showman P.T.Barnum.
• The 18thc s tone-swallower : two hundred pebbles in the stomach finally take their toll.
• Thinker, tailor, soldier, spy: the extraordinary women of Ghiyas-ud-din-Khalji's 15thc. harem.
• A 300-year-old recipe for Welsh Cakes.
• Image: Photo of a Victorian girl twinning with her doll
in matching bustle dress, c1880.
• Did Queen Elizabeth's virginals actually belong to Anne Boleyn?
• A labor of love? A vibrant crewel pocketbook from 1763.
• Vogue and virtuous virgins: a reflection on the history of the fashion magazine .
• The short but thrilling history of the Pony Express .
• A rare find: a tiny 17thc Shakespearean notepad.
• For Galentine's Day: a selection of favorite historical gal-pals.
• Photos from 1960-1970 of the vanishing shops of London's East End.
• Image: Photo of women workers for the fleet: the spinners of hemp for cables, c1902.
• "A republic...if you can keep it": the tale of a historical anecdote.
• Archaeologists dig up  Philadelphia history  beneath I-95.
• From grotesques to frumps: a field guide to  spinsters  in English literature.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection

Faking Luxury, c1770

Susan reporting,

This is another post drawn from the new exhibition that opened recently in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum of  Colonial Williamsburg . Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and Home features stunning examples from the late 17thc to the early 19thc, all drawn from Colonial Williamsburg's own collections. It's well worth a trip!

One of the more interesting items on display are these two textiles, shown side by side to demonstrate how block-printed textiles were used to mimic luxury woven silk brocades. The block-printed cotton was created for a lower-price market that wanted the fashionable visual impact of the brocade without the costly price. To the upper left is a sample of a woven silk brocade. To the right is a block-printed cotton that attempted to copy a similar look, and in the lower left is a detail of the same block-printed cotton. (As always, click on the images to enlarge them.)

Here's the information from the exhibition's placards:

"Designs for printed textiles came from a variety of sources. Sometimes the inspiration was the more expensive and less washable textiles such as patterned silks [left].

"The pattern for this block print [right] was taken from fashionable and expensive woven silks intended for women's gowns. Compare this piece with the silk panel. The horizontal lines and other textural effects in the background imitate woven ribbed grounds frequently used on brocaded silks. 

"The design defect caused by mismatching of the blocks and the somewhat coarse ground suggest that this textile was an inexpensive product aimed at audience that desired fashionable patterns without the cost.

"The blue was brushed on quickly after printing the other colors, a technique known as 'pencil blue.' The rapidity with which the work was done is evidenced by the imprecise application and stray drips from the blue brush."

This kind of imitation continues today. Though the reproduction methods and technologies have changed, the fashion world is filled with examples of printed brocades, faux fur, vinyl handbags embossed to resemble alligator, and "leatherette" jackets.

Left: Textile, brocaded silk, Spitalfields, London, England, c1770
Right: Textile, woodblock printed cotton with addition of pencil blue, Europe, possibly France, 1765-1785. 
Both textiles from the collection of Colonial Williamsburg. Photographs ©2017 Susan Holloway Scott

Fashions for April 1831

Court & Dinner Dress April 1831 Loretta reports:

By the 1830s, the vertical look is completely gone, the big sleeves are taking over, and hair is starting to get wild.  Though fashion illustrations look completely bizarre, I have seen some of these looks reproduced in period films, and they are more beautiful and graceful than you might suppose.

One of the looks I find particularly interesting is court dress, of which this is a great example. Plumes were required, as were the lace lappets (those lacy things hanging by the lady's ears) and a train. This plate does a good job of showing the difference between what one wore, say, to a Royal Drawing Room and what one wore for an evening event. As opulent as evening dress could be, court dress had to be very much more so.  The monarchs seem to have been very particular about court dress. Interestingly, Queen Victoria insisted on large plumes. She wanted to be able to see them easily.

As extravagant as this dress might appear, it's relatively normal-looking compared to what ladies were obliged to wear during the reign of George III and the time of the Prince Regent. Author Candice Hern offers an overview and examples of  Regency-era court dress here at her website .
April 1831 fashion description
Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

An Elegant Woman's Jacket, c1780, from Printed Cotton from India, c1750

Susan reporting,

I'm deep in the middle of final copy edits, so this will be a quick - but very beautiful! - post.

This woman's jacket is from the splendid new exhibition that opened last week in the Art Museum of Colonial Williamsburg . Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and Home features stunning examples from the late 17thc to the early 19thc, all drawn from Colonial Williamsburg's own collections. I'll be writing another post about the exhibition soon, but for now this will serve as a sample of the glories currently on display.

The jacket was made in Europe c1750 from a textile imported from India - a mordant-painted and resist dyed cotton - and lined in linen. Jackets like this would have been worn over a linen shift and a contrasting petticoat, and would likely have been accessorized with a triangular kerchief around the neck, with white ruffles pinned to the bottoms of the sleeves.

According to the placard:

This charming jacket is constructed from an earlier India chintz textile, clear evidence that the chintz was sufficiently prized to warrant restyling years later. The center-front closure suggests a date in the late 1770s or early 1780s. Fitted jackets worn with separate skirts called petticoats were practical and comfortable for work and informal occasions. They were more economical than full-length gowns because they did not require additional yards of fabric.

More to come....

Jacket, maker unknown, Europe, c1780; textile, India, c1750. Colonial Williamsburg. Photo ©2017 Susan Holloway Scott.

Breakfast Links: Week of March 27, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Charles Spurgeon's 1880s photographs of London's street traders.
• "We must make haste, for when we home are come, We find again our work has just begun": women's never-ending work in the 18thc.
• The enduring legacy of the Pocahontas legend.
• A brief, poignant video in honor of the at-risk textile mills that once defined the landscape of the North of England.
• Image: An over-the-top fop via an 1930 Saturday Evening Post cover by J.C. Leyendecker.
• With flint and derring-do, the early 20thc pilot Ruth Law ruled American skies.
• Experts restore a rare 17thc Dutch Golden Age map found stuffed up a Scottish chimney.
• George Washington's Mount Vernon during the American Revolution.
• Image: In 1902, a Frenchman imagined what women might look like if they started taking up "male" professions - don't you want to be this journalist ?
• How an 1887 Harlem, NY mansion became a Depression era rooming house - and home to an 85-year-old con artist.
• Regency rules of the road .
• New on-line exhibition for An Agreeable Tyrant: Fashion After the Revolution by the DAR Museum.
• The lost townscape of 16thc Edinburgh recreated.
• Houses of death: walking the wards of a Victorian hospital.
• Katherine Goddard printed the first complete copy of the Declaration of Independence.
• How to do, well, basically everything, according to cigarette cards.
• Pride and racial prejudice - how the far right is trying to associate their dogma with Jane Austen .
• Switchel , the 18thc energy drink.
• Child dropping  (or child abandonment) in Regency Britian.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection

From the Archives: Frothy, Fashionable Caps, c.1780

Susan reporting,

Since I'm in  Colonial Williamsburg  this week, it seemed like a good time to revisit this popular post from 2015. Then,  the mantua-makers had just finished two complicated sewing projects, and their form of relaxing was to replicate several silk gauze caps of the late 1770s-early 1780s.

Caps had been part of an Englishwoman's day-time wardrobe for many generations before this. Ostensibly to cover the head and hair for modesty's sake, they were worn by nearly all women of every age and rank. For working women, linen caps kept hair tidy and out of the way, and offered extra protection around open fires. For the more fashionable, caps could also provided a base for the wide-brimmed hats worn out-of-doors.

By the last quarter of the 18th c., however, caps had evolved into notable fashion statements on their own. Trimmed with ribbons, bows, and ruffles and enhanced with fine stitching and embroidery, caps inflated into frothy confections to match the towering hairstyles ("heads") of the time.

These stylish caps were made of the finest silk gauze, a translucent fabric with a crisp hand much like modern organza. The narrow rolled hems, pleats, and tiny stitches were a test of skill for the mantua-makers, as Nicole Rudolph, above left, demonstrates. The original caps were so airy and insubstantial that few survive in collections today. (Our CW manuta-makers report that even after a single careful laundering, the caps
begin to wilt, and after two, they're pretty much done.)

But longevity wasn't the caps' point. They were a trend-driven fashion, with new variations appearing frequently in the London shops. They could be further personalized with different bows, as the back view of the example, lower left, demonstrates (though it could use some equally fashionable  big hair  beneath it for proper height.) Compared to a new gown, caps were also inexpensive, and an easy way to update an older wardrobe.

Looking at the satirical prints of the time, right, it's easy to assume that the size and foolishness of the caps was exaggerated (along with everything else) by the artists. They weren't. Former apprentice Abby Cox models one of the caps copied by the shop from a print, lower right, and there's no denying its exuberant charm. Yes, the cap is extreme, and more than a little foolish to modern eyes, but to an 18th c. lady - and more importantly, to an 18th c. gentleman - there were few things more unabashedly flirtatious than a pretty young woman in a sweet ruffled cap.

Above left: Photo copyright 2015 Susan Holloway Scott.
Right: Detail, Deceitful Kisses, or The Pretty Plunderers, from an original by John Collet, printed by Carrington Bowles, 1781. Collection of the British Museum.
Lower right: Photographs copyright 2015 the Margaret Hunter Shop.

Feasts and Feats of Drinking

Midnight Modern Conversation ca 1732
Loretta reports:

Though Easter Tuesday comes rather later this year, I’m working with Hone’s date, since it seems equally applicable to all feast-days. I think, too, this offers a good example of phrases that sound modern, but actually have been around for a long time. Unlike so many other expressions, “hair of the dog” is as familiar to us as it was to Hone’s readers in 1826.  The OED traces it to the 16th century.

As to the “feats of potation”—given the level of drinking in Hone's time, one can only imagine what his ancestors might have consumed, to impress him so deeply.
Easter Tuesday
Image:
Unknown artist after William Hogarth, A Midnight Modern Conversation ca. 1732 courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Accession No. B1981.25.351

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Dukes and More Dukes

Loretta reports:

Because my computer hates traveling, and thinks every new WiFi it encounters is out to get it, my Casual Friday blog post comes on a Monday.

Warning: Unseemly boasting to follow.

On Tuesday last, while visiting the Atlanta Botanical Garden, I received word that my 2016 historical romance, Dukes Prefer Blondes, is a Romance Writers of America®  RITA® Finalist in the Long Historical category. The Rita is the RWA version of an Oscar, and being a finalist is like being an Oscar nominee. In short, it’s a very big deal, and I feel deeply honored.
You can find the other finalists here .

End of boasting; beginning sigh of relief.

Readers have asked about my new book. It’s finally done. A Duke in Shining Armor , the first of a three-book series, will be a December 2017 book. This means it will go on sale 29 November. I’ve been so busy trying to get it written and revised, that I haven’t yet updated my web page, but something will go up shortly after I get back home to Massachusetts. In the meantime, there’s a description on its page at
HarperCollins,

Amazon ,

Barnes & Noble

… and I can’t find the link to iBooks.

At some point, my publisher will have a cover reveal. Meanwhile, you can stay updated on details about my books and related matters if you subscribe to my erratic website blog . It will not clutter your inbox. As you can see, months can go by. But this is where the news goes first, usually, unless I am on the road and my computer...(see above).

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Breakfast Links: Week of March 20, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• The chef who cooked for Winston Churchill.
• In March 1776, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John on the evacuation of Boston.
• Aristotle's Masterpiece : what to expect when you're expecting, 17thc style.
• The first Texas-set novel was written by a Frenchman in 1819.
• The " Edinburgh Seven ", the first women to study medicine and matriculate at a British university in 1869.
• How America smuggled its way to revolution.
• Two 19thc stables for the horses of millionaires are all that remain on a NYC block that was one lined with them.
• Image: When you need something stronger: an 18thc flask .
• Charles Byrne was an 18thc marvel at 7'7" whose dying wish was to rest in peace; scientists had other ideas.
• The black soldiers who biked 2,000 miles over mountains and out of American history.
• Who was Moses Hazen, and why didn't George Washington share his name with Congress?
• Searching for Connecticut "witch" Hannah Cranna.
• Victorian  fat-shaming:  harsh words on weight from the 19thc.
• Fortune telling through moles .
• Image: Better to be a cow-banger than a fatuous pauper: unusual occupations from 1881 census.
• St Patrick's  Confessio : a medieval autobiography.
• How 18thc crowds in Pennsylvania and New Jersey expressed their views through festivities and protests.
• A tale as old as time: earlier versions of the Beauty & the Beast story have the woman as the ugly one.
• After George Washington's death, his wife Martha moved to an upstairs bedroom under the eaves: explore it in this virtual tour.
• A guide to the Atheneums of New England.
• Image: "Please accept this curl ": poem and lock of hair from Craigleith Military Hospital, 1917.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection