Monday, January 20, 2014

How to stuff a rhinoceros

How to stuff a Rhinoceros ??
Well I don't know, but Jean's great great great Grandfather did.


A rhino had been imported in to England  1790 as a gift to Mr. Dundas a Scottish Member of Parliament, who apparently did not want the bother of keeping it and gave it away. It was subsequently purchased by Gilbert Pidcock for £700 and was exhibited at the Exeter Exchange Menagerie in the Strand and also as an exhibit in Pidcock's travelling menagerie.

 The animal is described as having been very docile, would obey his keeper's orders and would allow visitors to pat him. In October 1792, in an act of getting to his feet, the rhino dislocated the joint in one of his forelegs, which brought on inflammation. This injury resulted in his death about nine months later, but not before Pidcock, its owner, had taken out an insurance policy on the animal. The death occurred whilst the Menagerie was on the move and near the town of Portsmouth, (some sources state "Corsham near Portsmouth”). The odour from the remains was such that the Mayor of Portsmouth ordered that the carcass be buried. About two weeks later, the story goes, the remains were dug up, at dead of night and was subsequently preserved by Thomas Hall of City Road.


This event was commemorated on a number of tokens issued about 1795, one by Thomas Hall and another by Pidcock.

 Read the full story in our book Thomas Hall of City Road available on Amazon.co.UK



Monday, December 30, 2013

Dad's first job

A hundred years ago this Christmas my dad left school at the age of thirteen.  He never explained why he hadn't left at the age of twelve like most working class kids at the time.

 So early in the new year he started his first job at Gibbs soap factory on Green Bank Wapping.
For anyone familiar with Gibbs products they will probably think of SR toothpaste, and older generations will remember Gibbs dentifrice.  Dentifrice was a cake of dental soap (there is no other word) in a metal tin.  The taste was dreadful, and no matter how little you tried to get on the brush, your mouth stilled filled up with soapy foam, but there were not that many toothpastes around at the time, and when you think about it those little round metal tins were quite convenient for when travelling.  Except that people didn't travel as much then !

Apart from the dentifrice Gibbs also made a toilet soap and this was the section that thirteen year old Dad went to work.  His main memories of those days was first of all the smell from the boiling vats and secondly the sheer hard work of cutting up large slabs of hard soap into small tablets.

Most people are probably aware that soap in days gone by had as it's main ingredient boiled bones of all kinds with the addition of lye and various sodas.  The smell given off from the boiling process could not be imagined by anybody who had not experienced it

Later Dad progressed to the cutting department.  He said that when solidified the soap was in large blocks about the size of a tea chest which were then cut into slices and then into tablet size.

The cutting was done with a length length of wire which was pulled through the soap.  Although the soap itself was not hard at this stage, it was still hard work for a thirteen year old who was not even fully grown.   (Even when fully grown he was not that tall anyway)

There was also another cutting device which contained a blade whist I'll had to be pulled through the soap 

And still requiring a great deal of effort for a young boy.

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Source for the goose

To source or not to source ...etc

Those a lot written on genealogy message boards with the suggestion that those who do not show their sources on public family trees are somehow guilty of shoddy research.

Not so!

When I started well over twenty years ago I did not record my sources.  The simple reason was that I knew where I had got the information and did not have to prove anything to anyone else.

The method was quite simple really.  If I recorded a full date and place for a birth then it followed that I had a certificate.  Likewise for a marriage, christening or a death or burial.

If I put in "about". Then I didn't know or it came from a census.  For census info then it went into the notes that on the xxxx census they were living at .... so that is clear that the approximate dates for that family came from the census.

I have had folk complain about this lack of sourcing but I just point out that I am not doing "GENEALOGY" but family history.  If they have dates etc which differ too mine, then they can do the same kind of research that I have done and possibly come up with the same results.

Professional genealogists have a different criteria.  They will need to show to fee paying clients that they have done the job properly.

I don't have to prove anything to anybody except myself


Monday, November 5, 2012

Free Web hosting

One of my first attempts at creating a website was to create a place where people researching their ancestors with the surname WORSFOLD could share their experiences and hopefully help each other.  This was in Geocities one of the earliest free host sites as far as I know.  Well that worked quite well for a few years and then Geocities got swallowed up by Yahoo and my Worsfold page disappeared,

I then reconstituted the page on Bravenet, another free server and that also worked well for quite a number of year,but suddenly (I am not sure when it happened) my links the page have come upwith a virtually blank page saying that the page had expired,

No explanations on Bravenet website, the4y now only list their paid hostings.

OK, so I wasn't paying anything and a commercial company has no obligations to non fee paying customers, but at least they could have made an announcement before pulling the plug, to give folk the chance ti move their web pages elsewhere and repair links which would be broken when a page disappears,

Unfortunately my pages on Bravenet were not important enought tio be archived on the way-back machine.

we live and learn, or do we.

Friday, September 7, 2012

Two Hundred Years Ago

Two hundred years ago my Great great Grandfather, Balthasar Dietz was born in the small village of Nordeck, Hessen, Germany.

This was the year of the virtual defeat of Napoleons army at Moscow, haveing captured the city, he found it burned out with none of the anticipated  supplies for his army of half a million men.  Being faced with the prospect of the advent of the Russian winter there began the great retreat of his army , commemorated in the 1812 overture.

One Hundred Years ago

A hundred years ago, my dad was aged twelve and spent his Saturday in a barber shop in Old Gravel Lane, as a Lather boy.


Most of the customers were dockers who worked a five and half day week, and went into the barber shop on their way home from work to have a shave, before the Saturday afternoon bath.
 Most of them did not shave during the week, so had a weeks stubble to be lathered up ready for the barber to shave them with the cut throat razor, normal in those days.  In order to speed up the process the lathering was usually done by a lather boy who spread the lather with a brush onto the face, and then used their fingers to massage the first lathering into the stubble to soften them up for the razor.  Dad commented that the tips of his fingers were red raw by the end of the day.

Not many men go to the barbers for a shave these days, and even those that do would not expect to be lathered up by a young boy. Those familiar with shaving in a modern barbers will understand that at George Warner's shop in Old Gravel Lane, Wapping he could not afford to supply all the little niceties that happen today.  Not for a halfpenny shave !!  That's right halfpence. (or appence)

So it didn't start with hot towels and then on to moisturiser before the lather brush.  Oh no, there was a saucepan of hot water simmering on a gas jet in the corner with a tub of liquefied soap alongside.  Dad had a variety of brushes to choose from and he never mentioned how he chose which brush to choose, perhaps there was no system, maybe the one that wasn't used on the previous customer.  So after putting the apron round the customers neck, there was a quick dip of the selected brush in the hot water, a swish around the soapy stuff and then straight onto the face for the first lather around.  Then came  the hard part.  rubbing the lather into the bristles in the hope that they would be softened up ready for the cut throat razor.  Dad was of the opinion that this to help George make his razors last longer rather than for the benefit of the customer.  Then it was on to the next customer to lather up and rub in with the fingers.  Back to the first one for a second lathering and the hope that George was ready to do the shaving, otherwise another rub in with the fingers would be needed.

As well as not shaving for a week, most of the customers  didn't
change their shirts or vests either.  Imagine the sweat resulting from  a week working at the bottom of a barge heaving coal up to the dockside.  Then there were the carmen who brought in a week of working with horses and who didn't smell any sweeter than their charges.   All hard graft in those days.  Carrying a hundredweight of coal (over 50 kilos) up staircases or from the bottom of the lighterage barge up to the dockside was no joke and it was a while after finishing work before the good humour of these men returned.  And it was no joke either for the lather boy close up and personal to all this, on the go for the whole time to earn sixpence from George and whatever tips the customer would hand over.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

eating out with smokers

Well not exactly eating with smokers, because we don't smoke and don't know anyone who does, but going out to eat where there are smokers is a bit of a problem.  We are on Gozo as a change from Malta and went out to eat the other night to a very nice restaurant with a roof top garden setting.  We are always aware of the fact that eating out of doors these days could be a pain if there are too many smokers around.  Here on the Maltese islands smoking is not permitted inside a restaurant, but come the summer all the tables are moved outside.  Tables inside mean that the smokers have to put on their hard done by act and go outside for a fix.  When eating outside of course they can assert their god given right to smoke as and when they please and if you don't like sitting next to them then hard luck.
Well anyway the other night we had barely sat at the table and looked at the menu before we were assailed by a positive smoke screen for two adjoining tables, so we had no alternative but to give up and leave.  The Maitre D. apologised, it wasn t her fault anyway, and said that they are not allowed to ask diners not to smoke, except that on one occasion they had asked one diner not to smoke his cigars.  I suppose it is all a question of degree, there are some who would find cigar smoke more offensive than cigarettes.  I wonder how she would have reacted to my Dad's smelly old pipe !

Still only another few weeks of summer here in the Maltese archipelago and some of the tables will be migrating back indoors.