General Chat

EIGHT-YEAR OLD LABOURERS

Times, June 22 1867

AGRICULTURAL EMPLOYMENT BILL.-----

The bill before the House of Lords proposes to enact that, after the close of this year, no boy under eight years of age and no girl under 13, shall be employed in agriculture for hire, and that no girl under 18 shall be employed in a public gang. The bill also directs the Quarter sessions to make by-laws, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State, requiring the attendance at a proper school of boys between 8 and 13 as a condition of their employment in agriculture for hire, the attendance to be for 400 hours in the winter half of the year, and 200 hours in the other half, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.; less than two and a half hours on one day not to be reckoned, nor attendance beyond five hours on one day. Powers are given to magistrates, guardians of the poor, and constables to demand from the employer information necessary for ascertaining whether the Act is observed. The Bill is to be enforced by penalties.

oooh I have a few more cabbie ones.......and about the traffic in London in Victorian times....not much seems to have changed apart from the vehicles.

One of my ancesters was a cabbie/ Cab-owner owner....He died after having his leg amputated 1893. I wonder if the inquest will say if he had fallen off a horse or maybe been run over.

.I was reading...online.... will have to find the url....about the life of a cabbie.....they hardly ever got to go home and it was a really tough job if you were just a cabbie, the owners took most of the money....... and the history of the first omnibus'

London Cabmen http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications/thomson-2.htm

http://www.victorianlondon.org/publications4/peopled-03.htm

still haven't found the one I was looking for but will do a more thorough search later.

Australian Occupations
http://www.coraweb.com.au/occsites.htm

http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/guide19/part06x.html (Time travellers guide to Victorian Britain)

added:--
This one has some photos of Cabmen’s shelters ( Have an article about the need for them, will put up when time permits )
http://www.urban75.org/london/cabmans-shelters.html

GETTING DRUNK WITH A PURPOSE.

Punch Magazine 1854

A MOVEMENT is now on foot to put a legislative stop to all drinking of every kind of beer or spirit, "except for medicinal purposes." Whether it will be an improvement to saturate society with water instead of moistening it with malt, is a question we leave to those who delight in dry discussion ; but we must warn the friends of total abstinence that the exception " for medicinal purposes " is sufficient to throw the whole question overboard. We never yet knew an old woman who could not find a "medicinal purpose" for every glass of grog she happened to have a fancy for.

If an Act of Parliament should ever be passed to prohibit spirit drinking, except for medicinal purposes, it will be absolutely necessary to add a schedule of imaginary maladies which shall be declared to be not within the exceptions allowed by the statute. In this schedule we would comprise that anile ailing familiarly known as the "wind," which has caused the consumption of more brandy and water by elderly females in one month than has been imbibed by the most inveterate topers during an equal period. We must also guard the legislature against the allowance of " spasms as a ground of exception to any measure for the prohibition of dram drinking, for there is no doubt that any woman of a certain age can command "spasms" at any moment, when she is desirous of calling up "spirits from the vasty deep" of the cellaret.


Misc: according to Punch Magazine....October 6 1854 was a Friday

ABOLITION OF TURNPIKES

Observer, June 12 1864

THE NEW ACT TO ABOLISH TURNPIKES.----

On the first day of July “The Metropolis Turnpike Road Act Amendment” will take effect, when twenty-five toll-gates and fifty-six side bars will disappear from the Metropolis, as far as the tolls are concerned. The statute will set free from toll-gate obstruction about fifty-one miles of road on the Middlesex side of the Thames. At Fulham including Walham Green and Earl’s Court, all the gates and side bars are to be removed; also at Kensington, Hammersmith, and Notting-hill….Further removals will take place at Holloway, Islington, Ball’s Pond, Kingsland Road, Cambridge Heath, Hackney, Twickenham, and Teddington. All the gates and side-bars of the City-Road are included.

SOBER AND CIVIL DRIVERS

The Times

April 24 1823

The Cabriolets, in honour of his Majesty’s birth-day, were introduced to the public yesterday. They are built to hold two persons besides the driver (who is partitioned off from his company), and are furnished with a book of fares for the use of the public, to prevent the possibility of imposition; these books will be found in a pocket hung inside of the head of the cabriolet. The drivers are selected from gentlemen’s servants only, who have produced good characters from their last places for sobriety and civility, and are dressed in a plain stable livery, and who will be discharged for any incivility or fraud. The fares are one-third less than hackney-coaches. They had a private trial on Tuesday, and were found to answer to all the purposes intended.

THE STETHOSCOPE

Sunday Times

December 12 1824

A wonderful instrument, called the stethoscope, invented a few months ago, for the purpose of ascertaining the different stages of pulmonary affections, is now in complete vogue in Paris. It is merely a hollow wooden tube, about a foot in length (a common flute, with the holes stopped and the top open, would do, perhaps, just as well,) one end is applied to the breast of the patient, the other to the ear of the physician, and according to the different sounds, harsh, soft, loud, etc., he judges of the state of the disease. It is quite a fashion, if a person complains of a cough, to have recourse to the miraculous tube, which, however, cannot effect a cure; but, should you unfortunately perceive in the countenance of the Doctor, that he fancies certain symptoms exist, it is very likely that a nervous person might become seriously indisposed and convert the supposition into reality.

MOST HORRIBLE MURDER

Cock Inn, Polstead

Saturday morning

The Times

May 4 1828

It would be impossible to describe the extraordinary interest which the inquiry touching the mysterious and atrocious murder of Maria Marten has excited for miles around. Business was suspended for the whole of Friday, and the village, notwithstanding its secluded situation, and the fewness of its inhabitants, presented the appearance of a large fair. The Inn was so crowded that no accommodation could be obtained after noon, and the village green was thronged by dense crowds, who had collected from all parts of the adjacent country and who did not disperse until late at night.

The manners of many of the rustics were far from creditable to their feeling, and one unacquainted with the fact would rather suppose they had congregated for purposes of hilarity and mirth, than for the purpose of witnessing a judicial enquiry affecting the life of a human being.

In one of the rooms of the Inn situate immediately below that in which the prisoner was placed, towards the after-noon a large part assembled, and amused themselves by singing light songs, and exhibited other symptoms of boisterous mirth.



THE VICTIMS GRAVE

Suffolk Herald

Reprinted in the Sunday Times

May 4 1828

The grave from which the poor victim has been taken is still open; the right layer of the barn had over it straw at least 6 inches deep, and the depth of the grave, by our admeasurements, somewhat less than 18 inches; the picking up of a barn floor---solid as a public road……serves only to show the brute-like and insensible manner in which the monster proceeded to his work.


TRIAL OF WILLIAM CORDER

Advertisement

Sunday Times

August 10 1828

WILLIAM CORDER---

On Wednesday next will be published the trial of WILLIAM CORDER, for the Murder of MARIA MARTEN, accompanied by a portrait and copies of upward of 50 of the letters sent to him, in consequence of an advertisement he inserted in the “Morning Herald,” of Nov 13 last, and in the “Sunday Times,” Nov 25, under the head of “Matrimony,” in consequence of which he obtained his wife.

POLICE REGULATONS

Sunday Times,

September 27 1829

Mr. Secretary PEEL must have laughed at some parts of that volume which has been prepared for the edification and guidance of the new police. If the recruits can understand, or even read it through in a year, they will certainly be very different from their thief-taking or thief-screening predecessors. However, we suppose this may be calculated upon, for we have heard so much of the care taken by the commissioners to guard against enlisting any but proper an accomplished persons like themselves, that it is almost a relief to find, in the work above-mentioned, that, so far as we have yet got, university honours are not required to prove the fitness of the individuals applying for a situation which is to prove the fitness of the individuals applying for a situation which is to bring them in 3s. per diem.