escargot
Disciple of Marduk
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2001
- Messages
- 43,404
- Location
- HM The Tower of London
One million likes for that last sentence Essie...could perfect perisher be translated as 'pure radge" nowadays?
GENIUS writing.
One million likes for that last sentence Essie...could perfect perisher be translated as 'pure radge" nowadays?
One million likes for that last sentence Essie...could perfect perisher be translated as 'pure radge" nowadays?
Not to disparage for one moment, Mr. Wodehouse's brilliance with words; but, Mungoman -- the word "radge" being new to me, I resorted to the Online Dictionary: gives it as "wild, crazy, violent" [Scottish, informal]. I see the old slang term "perisher" as denoting someone annoying / uncouth / offensive; but basically rather silly and ineffectual (as Spode was, for sure). Or has the r-word acquired new meanings?
A 17th-century sailor’s confession about a rape, of which he became so ashamed that he sought to cover it up for ever, has been exposed by conservation workers who discovered the note hidden under a rewritten version in his journal.
The confession went unseen for more than 300 years because the sailor pasted his second account so neatly over the top of the original that scholars missed it.
Edward Barlow’s lavishly illustrated journal of his extraordinary life is now held at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. The farm worker’s son joined the navy as a child, sailed as a teenager on the same ship as Samuel Pepys to bring Charles II back to England, survived several shipwrecks and captivity, and eventually rose to become a captain.
It was Paul Cook, a senior paper conservator at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, who spotted the newly pasted page and exposed Barlow’s shame.
Cook was told the manuscript was “a problem” when he joined the museum in 1985.
Cook became the first person in more than 300 years to read Barlow’s original words, hidden under the rewritten version, which included the weeping woman on the shore but omitted the account of the rape. Instead, Barlow wrote: “I had in part promised her at London that I would marry her … having had a little more than ordinary familiarity with her”.
Amelia Dyer brutally murdered babies by starving, drugging and strangling them, over an almost 30-year period.
Dyer, who was from Bristol, but travelled to Plymouth and other places across England to pick up the babies, was paid by unwed mothers and rich families to take care of their offspring in exchange for money, usually between £10 and £80, the equivalent of £1,000 - £8,000 today.
In 1869, she began placing adverts in local newspapers to adopt healthy children, enticing them in by mentioning she was married - which was a lie as her husband died the same year - and had a 'nice country home'.
She began murdering her innocent, helpless victims by overdosing them with a cordial, referred to as 'Mother's friend'.
The murders went undetected by the authorities due to the high infant mortality rates during the Victorian era, but in 1879, one doctor became suspicious due to the amount of death certificates he was issuing for babies being 'cared for' by Dyer.
She was eventually jailed for neglect - not murder - and was handed a six month sentence in a labour camp - but as soon as she was released, she returned to her sinister ways.
This time she changed her method to strangulation and continued to place ads and collect payments.
Realising that she was found out by doctors previously, she skipped reporting the deaths to the doctors, and instead ditched their lifeless bodies into rivers, including the River Avon and the River Thames, or bury them.
Some people would ask for their babies to be immediately murdered after birth, due to the shame of single motherhood in the era, knowing that the coroners would be unable to tell the difference between suffocation and still-birth.
She moved from town to town to avoid detection of her heinous crimes and even faked a mental illness, getting herself admitted into a mental asylum.
In 1896, she slipped up by dropping two bodies in the Thames at Reading, but did not weigh the boxes down enough, resulting in them being discovered by a bargeman.
In the package was the body of one-year-old Helena Fry, who had white tape around her neck - but Dyer had forgotten one vital thing.
The packaging was stamped with an address of a Mrs Thomas of 26 Piggott's Road, Caversham, Dyer's maiden name and home address.
Det Con James Beattie Anderson examined the package, which is now on display at the Thames Valley Police Museum, and spotted the clue.
Neighbours told the police where Dyer had relocated, and upon arrival at her home in Reading, were met by the stench of decomposing bodies, piles of baby clothing and receipts from adverts she had placed in various newspapers across the UK.
Officers ordered that the Thames was dredged, and discovered six more babies, all with identical tape to that which was used to murder Helena Fry.
She chillingly told them: "You'll know all mine by the tape around their necks."
On May 22, 1896, she appeared at the Old Bailey for the trial for the murders.
The then 57-year-old tried to plead insanity, but was convicted by a jury, who took less than six minutes to find her guilty.
After eventually confessing to her crimes, she was hanged on June 10, 1896, at Newgate Prison.
Here's a particularly grim tale from Victorian times.
Anybody on this side of the Pond know about the Barbary Wars fought by the newly independent US and Sweden against Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis and Morocco (1801-05 and 1815) ?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Barbary_War
Then there is the Great Emu War of 1932 where the Royal Australian Artillery was defeated by emus. This always makes me laugh. It was not our finest moment.
Gotta be a good shot to hit a moving emu with an apricot tho'They were only defeated because they gave up. If you want to kill emus, you need a crate of apricots covered in strychnine. I have it on good authority from a Territorian.