Recently my father-in-law showed me a 104-year-old newspaper that had been kept in the family attic. I LOVE that kind of thing so I was eager to take pictures!
February 28, 1922. The Princess Mary referred to is this one, the great-grandchild of Queen Victoria.
It was 1912. Women didn’t have the vote yet. That wouldn’t happen until 1918 for Britain and 1920 for America. And even then it wasn’t all women. To put it bluntly, it was a terrible time to be female…
…unless you were in one very specific scenario: on board an ocean liner about to sink with limited space on the lifeboats.
Today’s highlights in my ongoing project to read through and transcribe the letters of Rachel (a wealthy Victorian girl at boarding school on the East Coast in the 1890s) include…
Rachel’s cousin Will and his Yale roommate Allen both have the measles. Rachel shows limited sympathy (”Poor boy!”), before immediately mocking them and calling them “childish” for getting a disease only little kids get.
Rachel and her roommate “B” (It stands for Bertha!) attempted to steal a sign (what sort idk) from a fair they went to but found they “were carefully guarded”. She wishes Will could have been there to help.
Will has a crush on a girl named Jenny, who Rachel knows, and is constantly asking Rachel if Jenny has mentioned him.
“B” often sits next to Rachel as she writes and suggests things to add to the letter or just generally distracts her.
Will and Jack, who are brothers, don’t write to each other. They write to Rachel and tell her to write to the other and pass on a message for them. Rachel keeps asking why they do this, but goes along with it anyways.
Rachel always explains why there are ink blots or areas of sloppy writing in her letters. Explanations so far include such classics as: the dinner bell just rang, it’s after lights-out and I’m writing this in the dark, “B” is shaking my arm, “B” is kissing me, this pen is broken, the postman is almost here, and there was a bee.
For her 18th birthday Rachel received: a new Kodak camera, eighteen white rosebuds, silver manicure scissors, a pair of shell side combs, a silver pencil, and a vase of pink roses. However her favorite present was from her father who wrote to say she could just buy her own present and he would pay for it.
Rachel is always mentioning the pictures she takes with her Kodak. I wish I knew what happened to them.
Rachel likes to put question marks in the middle of sentences to denote sarcasm; i.e. “I am very ? sorry for you.” and “Men were not excluded and we had the pleasure ? of meeting several.”
Your 1890s slang word of the day: “squelch” (verb) – to be lectured or punished for something. Example: “I expect to be squelched unmercifully by mama and papa.” Can also be used as a noun as in: “This term we have had nothing but squelches.”
“Rachel is always mentioning the pictures she takes with her Kodak. I wish I knew what happened to them.”
Update: It took eight years, dozens of emails, an unbelievably kind invitation from Rachel’s granddaughter (also named Rachel) and 16 hours of travel but…
Shout out to the USA for pissing Canadians off so bad it flipped an entire election that was supposed to be a landslide for the center-right, forever in your debt o7
graffiti on the sidewalk outside my polling place.
As I’ve been posting old photos from my collection on here and my personal blog I’ve mentioned a few times that my favorite thing in the world is to buy historical photos/albums/diaries/etc. with little or no identification and try to track down clues about them.
I’ve received a few PMs (and get questioned often in real life) as to how I go about this, so I thought I would document the project I’m working on today to give people a basic idea of my process.
TODAY’S PROJECT…
is this “A Line A Day” five year diary which covers the years 1933-1937.
I’ve seen this one doing the rounds a few times (and it makes me cry every time I see it), but was curious about the original Latin text, so I did some digging: it’s a shortened version of CIL 10, 00659, a tombstone from Salernum (modern Salerno, Italy). (source; CIL is the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum).
Portaui lacrimis madidus te, nostra catella,
Quod feci lustris laetior ante tribus.
Ergo mihi, Patrice, iam non dabis oscula mille
Nec poteris collo grata cubare meo.
Tristis marmorea posui te sede merentem
Et iunxi semper manib(us) ipse meis
Morib(us) argutis hominem simulare paratam,
Perdidimus quales hei mihi delicias.
Tu, dulcis Patrice, nostras attingere mensas
Consueras, gremio poscere blanda cibos,
Lambere tu calicem lingua rapiente solebas,
Quem tibi saepe meae sustinuere manus,
Accipere et lassum cauda gaudente frequenter
And here’s my translation:
Wet with tears I have carried you, our little (female) dog, just as I did in happier times fifteen years earlier (lit. “three periods of five years). For myself, Patrice, now you will not give me a thousand kisses nor will you be able to lie lovingly around/against my neck. I have sorrowfully placed you, merit-worthy, in a marble tomb and I have joined you always to myself in death, as by your cleverness you matched a human. Alas, we lost such pleasures for myself! You, sweet Patrice, were accustomed to join us at our table, to beg charmingly for food (while sitting in our) laps. You were in the habit of greedily licking our cups with your tongue, which my hands often held for you. Frequently and joyfully (you) receive a weary one with your (wagging) tail…
tl;dr: this dog was named Patrice and was very, very loved. (another translation with some glossing of the text.)
Yep. It also correlates extremely strongly with an increasing decrease of violent crime. One of the symptoms of low level constant lead exposure is increased aggression and volatility.
Gas companies are still so mad at him he’s “unknown scientist”, know his name
Daily reminder that health and safety standards like these are what politicians mean when they talk about “deregulation.”
Patterson died 5 December 1995.
Petition to make his date of death a Tumblr holiday celebrated by talking about cool shit the gas and petroleum industries don’t want us to know about, and fighting to continue his work.
